Things to Make and Do

Abstract

Agamben argues that, in the art of the twentieth century, two forms of art thematize a fracturing of the regime of production: in the case of conceptual ready-mades, the reproducible cannot take on the status of originality; in the case of pop art, that which “ought” to be unreproducible becomes just that. In these cases, Agamben contends, the “bringing forth” of art continues to take place, but what is brought forth is στέρησης [sterēsis], privation, an art which is necessarily alienated. This privation, in Agamben's terms, must be understood through the dyad of ϵνϵργϵια [energeia] and δυναμις [dynamis] to insist that potentiality, unactualized δυναμις is the “existence of a non-Being, a presence of an absence”, which is to say that δυναμις is only what it is because of its relationship to the potential not to take place, to αδυναμία. I argue, following Katschthaler, that a similar case must be made for Cage's 4′33″ (1952), in that it represents the possibility of inaction: the performer could always have not played. I contend that, however, the bringing forth of absence is necessarily, a sort of dead end since, in an important sense, nothing has already taken place: the performer of 4′33″ does not have the option not to play, without the performance ceasing to be a performance of 4′33″. It is my claim here, if only provisionally, that Cage’s turn to indeterminacy, and in particular his use of transparencies in his Variations piece from Variations I (1958) onwards, may be seen as a way out of, or a solution to, the impasse of a privative abyss, be that as found in conceptual art or as formulated in 4′33″.