“The perfection of art is to conceal art.”

Quintilian

“What is it we want from art that our belief in content works to hide from us?”

Allan McCollum

John Cage, Variations 1, for any number of players & any sound producing means (1958), Eberhard Blum (flute)

“I think that’s been a theme in my work: where does meaning come from, where is it located, is it in the viewer’s mind, is it in the community at large? Is it dialectical or inherent in the object?”

“I’m interested in locating the meaning of my work—and the emotional content of my work—somewhere within those transactions which occur between the various someones who are involved in the artworks circulation. To do this I have to try to dislocate the objects so-called content. When we speak of a content as residing somehow within the art object, we disregard the objects meaning as an item in the real, social world, and replace this with all sorts of imaginary constructs.”

Allan McCollum

“The un-naive thinker knows how far he remains from the object of his thinking, and yet he must always talk as if he had it entirely. This brings him to the point of clowning. He must not deny his clownish traits, least of all since they alone can give him hope for what is denied him.”

Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics

John Cage, Music for Amplified Toy Pianos, Juan Hidalgo, Walter Marchetti, Gianni-Emilio Simonetti (Toy Pianos)