All language subtitles for The Revenge of the Dead Indians (Henning Lohner 1993)

There are phrases here that I like very much: “lnflate
it with the necessary oxygen until 'rt explodes!”

There you are: that's creation.

You always have to inflate yourself
with the necessary oxygen!

So this is our “traffic jam” - everything is
inside of it: this is the skull of a monkey.

Cage is the revenge of the dead Indians
on European music.

Cage is the revenge of the dead Indians
on European music.

“The Future of Music, Credo:

I BELIEVETHATTHE USE OF NOISE

Wherever we are,

what we hear is mostly noise.
When we ignore it, it disturbs us.

When we listen to it,
we find it fascinating.

The sound of a truck at 5O m.p.h.
Static between the stations.

Rain.

We want to capture and
control these sounds,

to use them, not as sound effects,
but as musical instruments.

Every film studio has a library
of "sound effects" recorded on film.

With a film phonograph it is
now possible to control

the amplitude and frequency
of any one of these sounds

and to give to it rhythms within or
beyond the reach of anyone's imagination.

Given four film phonographs,

we can compose and perform

a quartet for explosive motor;
wind, heartbeat, and landslide.

TO MAKE MUSIC

If this word, music, is sacred and reserved for
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century instruments,

we can substitute a more meaningful term:
organization of sound.

WILL CONTINUE AND INCREASE
UNTIL WE REACH A MUSIC

PRODUCED TH ROUGH THE
AID OF ELECTRICAL INSTRUMENTS

I remember the first time I saw Cage
was at some obscure festival in Rome.

I met john Cage a long time
ago, in the fifties.

David Tudor was also there
and together they gave concerts,

mainly of compositions by Cage.

That was in Paris, yes, at the concerts.

Cage was, in fact, a festival event.

But as a festival event he would remain
at the edge for a very long time.

What interested me about Cage
was his particular approach to music.

And this edge was very,
very important.

This approach he worked with is called:
chance operations.

And edges destroy borders, hmm?!

But it could go wrong.
Everything can go wrong.

And I like that.The category of chance
in Cage is very liberating.

I don't really know what exactly that was.

It was some weird event in front
of some church in Rome.

I had absolutely no clue
to what was going on.

When I was very young,
before the War,

I would frequently take my bicycle
for a ride along the Atlantic coast.

I would listen to the cries of the sea-gulls
and the sounds of the wind and the ocean.

There were sounds and noises
and people that were moving.

And 'n: vvas strange because
there vvas no way to categorize 'rt.

I heard these sounds of
the wind and of the ocean.

They were noises that
interested me tremendously,

but certainly not in the sense of
traditional music, how could that be?

Nevertheless, I thought it would be
interesting to explore guidelines or rules

to establish these sounds
as musical sounds.

At this festival, there were
actually seats for 5000 people.

And, in fact,at the beginning
there were at least 5000 people there.

But in the end there were maybe 400 left.

And then after that I heard how
depressed Cage was, really depressed,

and Cunningham,too, was totally
devastated that there were so few left!

So I thought that was a pretty good attitude.

Boy, vvas he depressed; he said: “Really, all of them should
have left, otherwise 'rt just doesn't make any sense.”

I remember well a huge public demonstration
during the War in the streets of Athens.

Hundreds of thousands had gone to the streets
against the Germans,the Nazis,

who had positioned themselves in
the middle of the street with their tanks

they started shooting at the demonstrators.

The event in Rome happened by pure chance.
I think it was in the late sixties.

It was a little bit like later,
like with (Robert) Wilson.

It was my first encounter with
a completely different concept of art,

not only conceptually, but a whole
different way of handling art

that didn't correspond to what
I thought art should be about.

What I was attracted to was the beauty
of the coincidental gesture,

and the elusive element that it had.

We were students then and not thinking clearly, I was
moving along in the front row of the demonstration.

We were moving down the street, yelling
these very rhythmic fighting anthems,

until we arrived at the center of the
avenue and faced the Nazis head-on.

But now they were shooting into
the mass of people behind me.

Their yelling and screaming behind me gradually turned
into an indescribable, unique, wonderful chaos.

I was terrified, but at the same
time I listened intensely.

'L am here

and there is nothing to say

those who wish to get
somewhere

let them leave at
any moment

What we re-quire

is
silence

but what silence requires

is

that I go on talking'.

The first time I went to the lJ.S.A. was in I975, I
think, and thereafter I returned quite frequently.

And there I got this feeling,
even an urge for landscapes:

“landscapes” in the sense of something that
is so vast, that has such a huge dimension

to 'n: that you can't really classify,
arrange, or domesticate it.

No matter what you try to do, something is always
left over: For instance: once I took a boat ride

along the Mississippi delta.

It was one of those everyday tours where
I could see these oil drilling plants

not far from old plantation mansions, all pretty
decrepit, kind-of rotting away into the swamps.

Then there was this surreal
feeling about alligators being around.

To me, that was very pleasant. I mean:to
see that capitalism has edges, “fringes”,

that you can never totally regulate,
that escape the system.

The production of “hyper-space”, an
“every-where”, and more and more fringes.

Edges, fringes are a beautiful thing.
And they destroy borders.

And the essence
of Cage's work for me

is that borders are constantly crossed,
constantly destroyed.

And then you stand
on unknown territory.

The unknown,finally, makes you curious
and that makes you creative.

More or less!

No, it's true that everything results and produces
everything else, and often without us watching.

There are famous examples. And you
have to subserve yourself to chance.

But when chance is there,
you have to recognize it.

There's the famous story about Fleming and penicillin.
He found those mushrooms on his window sill.

But anyone else would have left them alone, since they
wouldn't have known what they were trying to tell him.

Effectively, in any situation, certainly in architecture,
it's often that way and in music Pm sure it's the same,

there are these opportunities that
you have to take advantage of.

There are unexplainable, inexplicable
situation, that create poetry, meaning.

And you have to be on guard
for the encounter with chance.

Personally, in architecture for example, I often
try to create a “poetry of the situation”.

That means: an exchange between and within everything that we encounter
around ourselves, particularly within contradictions of the program.

And/or constraints of the material involved; and
here a shock is created that comes around by chance,

that isn't at all premeditated: it arrives at any moment,
and if you're on guard, you'll be able to catch 'rt.

So chance: that is the theory
of probabilities because

chance as a form of luck
doesn't really mean anything.

For instance, if I were to cross the
street and suddenly a car kills me

because I wasn't paying attention,then
that is what we call a coincidence,

a chance happening.

But if you start to put a game
mechanism into motion, like

throwing dice or throwing a coin
for heads or tails,

then that is already
somewhat more determined.

Or when it rains and some of
the rain drops fall on me:

those are phenomena that belong to the theory of
probabilities, that is: stochastic mathematics.

For millenea people
have been thinking of this.

Look at the ancient religions:

Gaia, the Goddess of the Earth,
slept with Chaos

and their child was Hermes -
or no, she did that with Zeus,

but she produced the Titans

and a whole series of other Gods as well.
She slept with Chaos,

and that is very interesting.

We try to further, higher,
and beyond our limits.

Every writer, every painter,
every scientist, every one of us,

every human being who doesn't want to remain
within the constraints of his small room,

everyone who tries to understand,

be it the world, politic, art, or science:

he has something of Faust within him.

It's between Beverly and Newburyport.

And where's that?

It's North Shore.

How do you get there from here?

Ah ha.A long way.

This is an evening for john Cage,

whom I admire so much,

especially for his continued effort to carry
music closer to the natural sciences.

'To obtain the value ofa sound,

a movement,
measure from zero.

A bird flies.
Pay attention to what it is,

just as it is.

Slavery is abolished.
The woods.

A sound has no legs to stand on.

The world is teeming

anything can happen'-

Now,this is the room for kids' toys.

L'm very interested in kids' toys because
it really shows where society has come to.

When I was a kid we used to play with dolls
that were substitutes for real humans,

they were like little children,
little people, little men, and so on.

And look where we've come to: over time that has
developed into these “space” figures,

that just aren't human anymore.

In fact, we perceive everything,
but not consciously.

Everything happens at once,
that is why small accidents can occur.

“Closed Tuesdays”.
But today is Saturday, so we can go in.

This here is a “red” version
of Duchamp's bottle-rack.

Ok, now, to me,
Com Cola is a fading star.

A company that once made
something so beautiful,

a bottle you could feel,
with engraved letters,

formed like Mae West,
like a woman:

this bottle is an experience - so lovely to touch,
if one is blind, one can still feel its shape.

If they allow something so
hideous to be made,

to me,thats giving up.
They're on their way out!

It's a disgrace!

Allowing something like this to happen
is trampling on people's sensibilities.

Even all the fuss that's being made about
Prince Charles and Lady Di...

I think this bottle tells
you the whole story:

“Made for the Royal Wedding
on july 29th l98l”,

and look at what it is:

it's not a Lady anymore,
it's a cock,a penis!

That's not Cola-like!
lt's not what we have in mind!

It's awful, it's horrible!

Accident

Adam Smith

Albert Einstein

all the same

anarchists

anything

artist

Attorney General's list

Bach

beyond imagination

brain cell

burned out cars

capitalist economy

censorship

Civil Disobedience

common sense

corporate power

corrugated metal

cortex

democratic revolution

dictionary

DNA

Duchamp

dust

Egypt'

eliminate the future

empty space

environment

Finnegans Wake

Fleischer

focus

food for us

found object tradition

I“?

steaming garbage on fire

genetic mutations

groupes de transformations

hand catching lead

Humboldt

I-Ching

IMF

In a flash

in between

Indians

instrumental virtuosity

International World Assignment of Radio Frequencies

Jackson Pollock

James Dean

jesus Christ

john Cage

john Wayne

by“

landmark

land scape

Landschaft

L'echelle

le piano prepare

light table

metaphor

Mexican War

mind

Mozart

muscle memory

Museum of Modern Art

mushroom walk

nowhere

on the road

Passport

pattern recognition

playing games

predatory market forces

quantum theoretic revolution

racism

random

rat

fight wing pathology

Route V2.8

sans nécessité

Schonberg

serial computers

serial music

serial organization

shadows

Shakespeare

silence

simulated time

single frames

slavery

snake

strange attractor

strange particles

subterranean apartment

surrogate zoo

telephone booth

The forgotten

The Real World

The Wild,Wild West

Thoreau

tool

tornado

total serialisation

traffic

transparance

turbulence

Unified Science Group

virtual reality

volcanoes

within one note

wh)'

Why not?

ZZZ

After all, we are not tourists!

We have a job to take care of,
so we can't really stop to look

around and just enjoy the nice
blue sky or something like that.

So,these mushrooms are Cepes,
those are the Girolle,

and these are the trompete de la mort,

which are the “3 colors of Death”
and this is the pleurotte.

I think the street market is another life. When I'm
at the market I live a different life than at home.

Really, they are two different lives.

I love the chaos of voices at the market:
some speak French,others speak Arabic,

one cries, another speaks very softly,
and the next says nothing.

I enjoy being in the middle of the street because
we are in direct contact with all people.

There's some confusion,
but that's normal;

in fact, it's necessary. That little
element of chaos is what keeps the balance

between the salesman and the customer.

What else can l tell you?

Here we have two shops in one:

outside,we have our street sales,
and there we have our “inside-store”.

This means that we have
two different types of customers.

Those who are in a hurry buy prepared foods,

packaged, like the ones you see here.

Inside, sales are made by the kilo,
by the weight of the item.

That's the difference.

Pretty flowers in the center of Paris, in the
middle of the street - that's an enjoyable thing.

Many people come to us and say:

You have a very nice job bemuse
although there are so many cars around,

so much noise and concrete everywhere,
we have the feeling of being in nature.

And it's true - we do have a little
piece of nature here. Don't you think?

I must say, I feel much more in the
countryside here than in the city!

Yes, well,you kind-of have to be used
to the sounds,the noise.

If you work here,
then you live with noise.

C)ne person calls a customer, the other yells, and that's the
way 'rt is with the other vendors, too. lt's quite normal.

You have to get used to that. All these
noises - but they are also very pleasant!

Another salesman yells, we yell, the customers
come. That creates a pleasant atmosphere.

Ah,the noise -the car noise, yes,

that irritates us a lot, in the
evenings my had is really rumbling...

lt really matters a lot,
but less than the cold.

The cold -that's really hard to take.

The noises we are accustomed to: the sound of the traffic,
horns honking all the time, the police car sirens...

But the cold - you just can't beat it.

Yes,we value it: we live in noise
and yet we appreciate it.

That's part of our profession.

If there were no mars,
the streets would be quiet and calm.

But that's not what a street with
markets and shops is about.

The street has to live - there has to be a lot
people on the sidewalks, and a lot of traffic.

A lot of activity.

At home it's different.
At work we don't think of it so much.

There are so many people here, the atmosphere
and all of that - it's not the same.

At home there's a different mood.

Here,at the street market,
the sounds are more like music,

but at home you don't
think of things like that.

Yes,I am accustomed to the noise,
but with noise life's also more beautiful.

Without noise this place would be quite sad.

There would be nothing to hear.

In the beginning, when
I arrived here to work,

I heard absolutely everything - the street
noise, my coffee machines, and so on.

After a while, I became used to it all and I don't consciously
hear it anymore. I think it's a question of habit.

I enjoy silence.

At home I like peace and quiet.

I don't really pay much attention to
the noise, but I do suffer from 'rt.

At home I like true silence:

no cars, no music, no noise,

just my children.

I would like to prepare a calf's head.

How should I do that?
Can you give me some advice?

Well, you'll need a calf's head!

Yes, but what do I make it with?

- You mean,which vegetables?
- Exactly.

You an take baked or boiled potatoes...

You mean, as if I were preparing a stew?

Yes, exactly.

You put it in a pot and cook it together
with vegetables, potatoes and onions...

- Ah,that is a good idea!
- But of course!

Actually, the lack of history
is our chance to escape.

The only history the USA has is,

the Civil War and the War of Independence
- which is almost completely repressed.

The Civil War is still history and at least
still in the subconscious of the people.

And the other side of that
are the dead Indians.

And the history of the USA are actually the dead Indians
because it is so completely repressed and subconscious.

Culture has always come
from the vanquished, not the vanquishers.

The vanquished, even the dead,

somehow rise up into
the vanquishers' culture

and determine or change it.

I find that interesting.
That's the Indian element in Cage.