639 years. That’s 233,235 days, 20 billion seconds, roughly 9 lifetimes. Even when put into specific and deliberate numbers, such a timeline is hardly fathomable to us. It is no new thought that time, much like art, is relative, but is it so simple to enhance the legacies of our creations by prolonging their mortality? If so, what’s the date of expiration? How long would it be until the parts of us we try so desperately to leave behind are invariably forgotten and eventually die?
A fascinating project that might shed some insight on such heavy questions is an ongoing performance of John Cage’s As Slow as Possible in the Halberstadt Cathedral of Germany, or more accurately, a 639-year performance of John Cage’s As Slow as Possible in the Halberstadt Cathedral of Germany. The context behind this installation’s set up can seem deceptively contemplative, surely such a project must be the brainchild of some deeply brooding cliché of an artist trying to communicate a sentiment the general public just wouldn’t get. How the Halberstadt performance came to be is much more of an Occam’s Razor type deal. A curious coalition of composers and musicians saw the potential in the practical permanence of the organ to perform the renowned Cage composition truly as slow as possible. The determination of the location and the seemingly random timeframe of 639 years was equally as straightforward. The Halberstadt Cathedral is home to the world’s oldest, permanently installed organ, an achievement the institution laid claim to for 639 years prior to the start of the music project.
As simple as the Halberstadt performance’s motivations were, such an ambitious installation cannot help but garner questions concerning its greater significance to the art world. Of the many conversations sparked by this longstanding sentinel, I’m most excited about the performance’s implications on the death of art. Assuming perfect maintenance, this truly will become a unique capsule of change no generation for a considerable amount of time will be excluded from. Comparable projects that come to mind are Manfred Laber’s Time Pyramid and the Great Mosque of Djenne.
While this brief series has been an extended and emphatic discussion on the death of art, the conversation which surrounds what keeps art alive is magnitudes more complex. While the whole of the potential prognoses that may kill art are infinite and innumerable, in the very least, specific cases can be discussed, dissected. What perpetuates art, the intangible factors at play, are not so obvious as the killers of art. But I think whatever it may be that keeps our art alive, comes quite close to the special X factor of the Halberstadt performance, the Time Pyramid, the Great Mosque. In one way or another the traditions, the faithfulness and flexibility of tradition, that surround these three pieces possess pass on a sense of relevance to the future. Through their existence, our importance is inherited. Of course, there is no guarantee of how the ideals, the hopes, the concerns of today will be received tomorrow, but art has never been a field centered around consistency. The illusion of a “forever” projected by this particular rendition of As Long as Possible is evocative, tempting. Whether we speak of who we were yesterday, who we are now, whoever we may be tomorrow, such a concept will always be tantalizing to the whole of humanity…such an idea may even be enough to stave off the infamously daunting thought of the death of art.
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