Walk Around #1: Obsoleting The Trust
Walk Around #1: Obsoleting The Trust
Lessons from the collaboration of Merce Cunningham and John Cage
Before I begin: I'm using ChatGPT and Microsoft bing.com chat in some of my writings. It doesn't mean I ask AI to write for me. I won't do that. I get help from the AI language model as an assistant to improve my research process. Whenever I use the results from ChatGPT I will mention that part. This can be an ethical way of using AI language models. I will write later about how AI language models may impact us positively and negatively.
#1 On Trust
We usually talk about building trust when there's a collaboration condition. Yet, there's no single agreed-upon interpretation of trust, but it can be related to confident expectations and a willingness to be vulnerable. Some scholars also define trust as one’s belief and expectation about the likelihood of having a desirable action performed by the trustee.
In normal day-to-day life, trust is closely related to expectations from others. However, when we try to build trust, it can mean that the condition is trustless.
#2 On Merce Cunningham
A couple of months ago I saw a short video about Merce Cunningham the most influential choreographer of the 20th century. His work with his partner John Cage resonated in my mind with the concept of trust.
Merce Cunningham was an American modern dancer and choreographer who developed new forms of abstract dance movement. He was a many-sided artist, a fierce collaborator, a chance taker, a boundless innovator, a film producer, and a teacher. He was born in 1919 in Centralia, Washington, and died in 2009 in New York.
(Source: Conversation with Bing)
Here is the video: The six sides of Merce Cunningham
Most of his work is based on complexity and improvisation. There are ideas and rhythms but it's not like a well-designed and planned dance. He changed the concept of choreography forever by questioning established rules.
#3 On Partnership of Cunningham and Cage
Although his work is outstanding, we can't deny the role of John Cage:
Merce Cunningham and John Cage were partners in life, love, and work for more than 50 years. They shared a radical vision of art that challenged conventional notions of space, time, and causality. They collaborated as non-collaborators, meaning that they created their music and dance independently, without knowing what the other would do until the performance.
(Source: Conversation with Bing)
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#4 Obsoleting the trust
Back to the interpretation of trust. When I was watching “Chance Conversation” interview with Merce and John (I strongly recommend watching this 30-minute interview. There are lots of inspirations and lessons beyond what I spotted and shared), it seemed as if they had actually obsoleted the concept of trust, as they did not expect their choreography to be well-designed. All the work was based on experimentation and all they had was a sense of time and space.
The main thing about it [Root of an Unfocus performance] —and the thing everybody missed—was that its structure was based on time, in the same sense that a radio show is. It was divided into time units, and the dance and music would come together at the beginning and the end of each unit, but in between they would be independent of each other. This was the beginning of the idea that music and dance could be dissociated, and from this point on the dissociation in our work just got wider and wider.
Merc Cunningham in conversation with author Calvin Tomkins
#5 A new symbolic language
Sometimes, trying to build something between each other means admitting the lack of it. I think Merc Cunningham and John Cage were exceptional in their work not because they tried to build trust, but because they had a shared philosophy. They were from different worlds but created a shared world together. They actually created a distinct symbolic language in their own world and presented it to the world.
Watch this short video to learn more about Cunningham's work:
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