JOHN CAGE | VARIATIONS VII
PERFORMED BY :zoviet*france:, Atau Tanaka and Matt Wand

20:00 - 21:00 and 21:30 - 22:30 Friday 29 February 2008

AV Festival 08
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
South Shore Road, Gateshead, NE8 3BA, UK

£6 | ticket information: avfestival.co.uk/tickets

American composer John Cage (1912-92) was a celebrated pioneer of electronic and chance music. As part of AV Festival 08's opening gala, one of his most famous performances is to be recreated for the first time in the UK. The original Variations VII took place at 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering in the 69th Regiment Armory in New York, in October 1966 where Cage intended the work to transform the building into a broadcast space. Alongside radios and televisions collecting sounds, there were 10 phone lines connected to city locations including a dog pound and the New York Times press room. Other microphones were attached to household appliances such as a juicer and a blender. There were also Geiger counters and short wave radios and photoelectric cells triggering different sound sources on and off as the performers and audience moved around. The aim, said Cage, was to "go fishing" for sounds.

AV Festival 08 is staging an entirely new version of the work, performed by an exceptional ensemble of :zoviet*france:, Atau Tanaka and Matt Wand.

Produced by AV Festival 08 in collaboration with BALTIC, in association with the John Cage Trust, Julie Martin/Experiments in Art and Technology and the Daniel Langlois Foundation.