About ten years ago, somebody asked John Cage, "Well Mr. Cage, aren't you troubled by all the suffering in the world?" And he said, "No I am not. There is exactly the right amount of suffering in the world." When I first heard it, I was quite revolted and disgusted by that statement, but in the ten years since I've come to agree with it totally: that to protest against the suffering in this world is an incredible insult to the victims of this world. Their suffering is exactly what they have received because of the conditions which are imposed upon them. To protest against suffering is to degrade suffering, without an understanding of why that suffering was made necessary. This is why I think that the Hans Haacke piece, which is a description of the trustees of the Guggenheim Museum, is to show nothing but the badges of their triumph. We know we are ruled. The question is not whether we are ruled or not. It's how we are ruled. And believe me, we are ruled not by the crimes of the people who rule us, but by their legal practices. [...] What we have to do is stop protesting and start understanding, because we can never overthrow the rulers who rule us unless we understand how they rule us.

- Carl Andre, statement from "Perimeters of Protest" Panel (1975)

Into Great Silence
a film by Philip Gröning

Six Favorite Recordings from 2007

Volume 3
Dogstar Orchestra


b-boim series [b-boim]
Radu Malfatti


Septet [IMJ]
Takefumi Naoshima, Hirozumi Takeda, Utah Kawasaki, Mitsuteru Takeuchi, Toshihiro Koike, Takahiro Kawaguchi & Yasuo Totsuka


The Room [Erstwhile]
Keith Rowe


Malignitat [Hibari Music]
Taku Unami


not BGM and so on [(h)earrings]
Mitsuhiro Yoshimura & Taku Sugimoto

New interview with Keith Rowe by Josh Ronsen

Now here I am, in my mid-fifties, and about a year ago I got very upset. Terribly upset. I began to wonder if music was an art form altogether. Now that's something to get upset about. And I think the reason I got upset about it is perhaps maybe because of my PhD students. Because none of them approach it as if it's an art form. Yes, it's a music form, it's a memory form, it's a form that is allegedly supposed to do this and that, if you do this and that. And so here I am; after all Beethoven only lived a few years longer than I am now, talking to you here. So I'm at the end of my life, let's say I'm at the end of my life; working since I'm thirteen; I wake up one day and I say to myself "What the hell am I involved with? Memory forms? Musical forms? Various type of almost like, set Avedon poses? Now we take a walk in the Alps ... Now we go slumming with peasants ... Now we thank God that we got rid of venereal disease, or whatever? I mean what the hell is it all about, all the set poses, the set emotions? Do we have anything in music for example that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away, from some aspect of illusion and reality? Do we have anything like - Proust? Do we have anything comparable to Finnegan's Wake? I wonder.

- Morton Feldman, Toronoto lecture

Liner notes in English for Septet:

Takefumi Naoshima
Toshiya Tsunoda