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Mediatheque
Shigeko Kubota 久保田成子
Marcel Duchamp and John Cage 馬塞爾‧杜尚與約翰‧基治
1972
Marcel Duchamp and John Cage is a black-and-white video made by Japanese artist Shigeko Kubota in 1972 to memorialise Marcel Duchamp, who died in 1968. Duchamp’s concept of readymade art influenced the Fluxus movement, an international collective that foregrounded experimentation in artistic practice. The work of John Cage, who incorporated chance in his musical compositions, also informed the group’s activities. Kubota became affiliated with Fluxus when she moved from Japan to New York in 1964.
The work puts Kubota in dialogue with Cage as she documents and reinterprets his work. Images and footage of Cage and Duchamp appear onscreen, sometimes processed to fade in and out of legibility, while harsh, electronically abstracted recordings of Cage's compositions accompany the visuals. At one moment, Cage sits at a table with a sensor circling his head, attached to a monitor tracking his brain waves. Kubota’s husband, the artist Nam June Paik, supervises the recording. Towards the end of the video, Kubota displays handheld footage of her visit to Duchamp’s grave. The video ends with the solemn closing words of Cage’s speech: ‘Death we expect. But all we get is life.’
The work puts Kubota in dialogue with Cage as she documents and reinterprets his work. Images and footage of Cage and Duchamp appear onscreen, sometimes processed to fade in and out of legibility, while harsh, electronically abstracted recordings of Cage's compositions accompany the visuals. At one moment, Cage sits at a table with a sensor circling his head, attached to a monitor tracking his brain waves. Kubota’s husband, the artist Nam June Paik, supervises the recording. Towards the end of the video, Kubota displays handheld footage of her visit to Duchamp’s grave. The video ends with the solemn closing words of Cage’s speech: ‘Death we expect. But all we get is life.’
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