1 There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. – John Cage, “Experimental Music” (1957), in Silence: 50th Anniversary Edition (Wesleyan UP, 2011), p. 8 Philip Nel, guitar and vocal, Manhattan, Kansas, 26 July 2020. 2 John Cage’s 4’33” was first performed
For the first time in 32 years, there is a new book by Ruth Krauss! Roar Like a Dandelion, with art from Sergio Ruzzier, was published on the first of the month. Krauss began writing the book in around 1960, just after she began to focus more on writing poetry or poem-plays and less on
“Back in the sixties . . . I thought of myself as an experimental filmmaker. I was interested in the image for its own sake – different ways of using it – quick cutting and things of that sort. . . . I loved what one could do with the montaging of visual images, so
There are a lot of modernist children’s books, and a fair few directly influenced by the historical avant-garde – and, yes, I am sharing images, below.  I learned about these books (and a great deal more) last week at Children’s Literature and the European Avant-Garde, a conference at Linköpings University, in Norrköping, Sweden.  You would
As winter continues its assault, let’s turn to a classic book about winter: It Looks Like Snow (Greenwillow, 1957), Remy Charlip‘s picture-book tribute to John Cage. Like Cage’s 4’33” (1952), Charlip’s piece makes the audience’s experience the subject of its experiment. The primary difference of course is the specific sense through which we apprehend the art
