Heiner Goebbels and Curatorial Composing after Cage: From Staging Works to Musicalising Encounters - Ed McKeon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022
by Heloisa Amaral
Ed McKeon's Heiner Goebbels and Curatorial Composing after Cage presents a compelling case for curatorial composing as a method and ethics of music curating. An alternative to established music curating discourses focused on content and repertoire, curatorial composing appeals to the perceptual experience of the spectator and the transformative potential of a musical situation. This approach integrates music-curatorial thinking into the broader discourse on curating and performativity, as articulated by performance theorists such as Erika Fischer-Lichte, whose notion of the “re-enchantment of the world” (2008: 181) resonates with McKeon’s emphasis on wonder as a fundamental curatorial affect.
Wonder is essential for invigorating action and deepening our connection to life. Drawing on philosopher Catherine Malabou, McKeon describes it as arising from encountering the unfamiliar and the unique, that which not only astonishes but also heightens self-awareness, driving meaningful engagement and motivating self-care. McKeon’s interest in wonder is due to a deeper concern with the contradictions of the human condition, notably the desire for both permanence and renewal. As discussed by Hannah Arendt, these desires drive to a large extent our cultural, hence artistic, endeavors. We are mortals who fear our death and rely on creating things that we hope will outlast us, providing us with a sense of immortality. At the same time, we strive to direct our own lives and assert our freedom through the actions and choices that define our individual identities. At first sight, art offers an ideal space to reconcile these desires, since artworks can attest to permanence as well as to the newness a maker can bring to the world. However, art as belonging to the public realm is a privileged scene, rife with power struggles: abuse of power often happens under the pretext of overcoming precarity and providing stability. Value and authority can thus be given to artworks through the workings of ideologies which privilege the maintenance of given status quos over the new and/or non-conforming. Expectations and rituals of reception form around these works, with general adherence expected and individual expression discouraged.
The political issue at stake is how to cultivate spaces in the artistic realm in which individual freedom is stimulated and a plurality of perspectives can bloom. As music producer and curator, McKeon recognizes this potential in the compositional and curatorial work of John Cage and Heiner Goebbels, drawing upon their practices to propose the foundations for curatorial composing. He highlights how both artists challenge basic assumptions of music creation and reception, rejecting external authority and creating conditions for unexpected encounters – and possibly wondrous experiences – rather than only making or showcasing finished works. The originality of the book lies in the parallels McKeon draws between the artistic practices of Goebbels and Cage and their less-documented activities as curators and presenters of other artists’ work.
Cage was greatly influenced by his teacher Arnold Schönberg, who believed that music possessed an immanent logic rather than being an exposition of transcendental thoughts. Yet, while Schönberg defended the idea of generating harmony and form from a motivic seed through a process of “developing variation,” Cage retained the self-generative principle but took it further, rejecting overarching elements or tone-based seeds. “Returning to zero,” he designed situations where contingent encounters between tones, but also sounds and non-musical elements, could occur. The “seed” was to be produced by the situation itself, “an empty glass in which at any moment anything may be poured” (Cage in McKeon, p.16). Strict compositional techniques further liberated these elements from their traditional relationships, and the listeners from their expectations, most famously in 4'33", where sounds were allowed to “marvel in their own splendor” (p. 16) and listeners themselves were asked to articulate the music by freely engaging with environmental sounds.
McKeon highlights Cage's curatorial concepts, like the Museumcircle at the Neue Pinakothek in 1991, where Cage used indeterminacy principles to disrupt canonical museum practices, including stratified classification principles, notably through the process of borrowing items from other museums and displaying them differently each day based on chance operations. Another notable example is the 1952 “happening” at Black Mountain College, featuring artists from various disciplines performing independently yet simultaneously, creating what Jacques Rancière (2009: 59) terms a “dissensual community” – an aesthetic community marked by disconnection, contrasting the mimetic art regime where elements converge to represent unified ideas. The interpretive agency of the visitors was stimulated in each of these examples and even more so in participative projects such as 33 1/3 (1969), where they were asked to choose which records to play out of a display of 300 LPs of various genres, or in Les Chants de Maldoror (1971), in which audience members could decide how Lautréamont’s texts would be read. As Cage himself stated: “We need [...] a music in which not only are sounds just sounds, but in which people are just people, not subject, that is, to laws established by any one of them” (Cage in McKeon: p. 25).
As a child of 1968 and a sociology major, composer, and music theatre director, Heiner Goebbels has always been highly aware of the political dimensions of his work. McKeon discusses Goebbels’ own artistic practice as well as his initiatives as artistic and managing director of the Ruhrtriennale in Germany between 2012-2014, noting a remarkable consistency across these various practices. Goebbels’ practice is characterized by a polyphony of independent elements – such as light, music, text, and movement – that stand on their own without being relegated to traditional subordinate relationships, such as music illustrating the emotions in a text. This independence might come from the fact that Goebbels operates “without a center,” that is, in a free play of references without a main theme, be it musical, textual, or otherwise. His materials are organized according to a poetic logic that eludes expectations and reconfigures the perceptual field.
Although each work is meticulously composed, Goebbels never works from a fixed meaning. Instead, he likes the audience to make sense themselves of the “non-connectedness” on stage, where even commonplace things appear new in unusual contexts or juxtapositions. This feeling of newness gives these things new importance, attuning audiences to their “symbolic necessity” (p. 65) and lending existential significance to the moment. Similar intentions characterized his work at the Ruhrtriennale: the diverse programming focused on new productions and hybrid expressions, such as performative exhibitions, sound art, and music theatre. Different modes of attention and counterpoints in the order of the program were carefully considered to encourage visitors to enjoy the resonances and correspondences between productions. McKeon delves more specifically into Goebbels’ expanded site-specific approach and communication with the audiences.
Goebbels’ engagement with the physical space is proof that his attention to every element of each performance – including venues, traditionally functioning as backdrop – can have a transformative effect and act upon not only the audience’s perception, but upon existing artworks as well, imparting them renewed meaning. Performance venues at the Ruhrtriennale were treated like stars; they had been carefully selected to interact with the productions shown in them and featured prominently in the program.[1] Connecting with the history of the sites made sense within the larger project of the Ruhrtriennale, which included the rehabilitation of forlorn industrial buildings through cultural use. It also fostered new temporal perspectives, new relationships between past, present and future without nostalgia or historicism. Moreover, the polyvalent spaces offered laboratory-like working conditions for artists, allowing productions to emerge from the creative processes that took place within them.
When it came to event publications, the focus was on the interpretive agency of the audience and their curiosity for the unknown. The invitation to experience was much more prominent than an overarching message or the usual name-dropping, extolling the reputations of the authors and performers. Meaning and value are often imposed on spectators before they even enter a show, through communications that emphasize the star status of an artist, pressuring spectators to join the “pool of fans” so as not to be perceived as ignorant or as outsiders. For Goebbels, however, meaning and value must emerge immanently – derived from the interplay of elements and associations evoked in the spectators, rather than as a curatorial or promotional imposition. In sum, every performance should be an invitation to openness, creating what we today might call a “space of care.”
All in all, McKeon's analyses of Cage and Goebbels, along with the rich philosophical references he weaves through his reflections, are inspiring. However, the brevity of this otherwise dense book leaves readers yearning for more. I would have wished for a more in-depth engagement with Cage's and Goebbels' perspectives in relation to contemporary discourses on self-governance and inclusion. A closer examination of how the Ruhrtriennale under Goebbels sought to attract and engage the diverse audiences he aimed to reach would have been particularly insightful. For instance, it would have been valuable to explore the specific curatorial strategies employed to bridge the gaps between distinct social groups and cultural experiences.
Goebbels’ approach, much like Cage’s curatorial philosophy, seems to assume an audience made up of sovereign and independent individuals, capable of interacting with sound in a spirit of creativity and play. This raises an important question: can we still conceive of audiences in this way, given the persistent barriers – be they social, economic, or cultural – that prevent certain individuals or groups from fully accessing and participating in artistic experiences? From a curatorial perspective, how can musical events and environments be crafted to allow each person’s inherent uniqueness to flourish, despite the societal structures that shape and often limit individual autonomy? How can we create conditions that encourage genuine participation and engagement, rather than merely accommodating the external constructs that dictate access and inclusion?
I look forward to seeing how McKeon continues to address these questions in his next book.
References
Fischer-Lichte, Erika (2008). The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. London: Routledge.
Rancière, Jacques (2009). The Emancipated Spectator (trans. Gregory Elliott). London: Verso.
