FILM

A Tribute to John Cage
Nam June Paik, 1976, US, video, 29'

In this multifaceted portrait, Paik creates a pastiche of John Cage’s performances and anecdotes, interviews with friends and colleagues, and examples of Paik’s participatory music and television works that parallel Cage’s strategies and concerns. The methodology and philosophies that inform Cage’s radical musical aesthetic — chance, random- ness, the democratization of sounds — are evident as he performs such seminal pieces as 4’33” of complete silence in Harvard Square, or throws the I Ching to determine performance sites. Among the collage of elements included in this work are segments from Paik’s Zen for TV; Paik and Charlotte Moorman in early performances, including the TV Bra; and anecdotes from composer Alvin Lucier.