Guilford College Associate Professor of Art Mark Dixon ’96 and College of the Atlantic Professor Jonathan Henderson ’05 present new work at Black Mountain College’s (BMC) ReViewing 12 Conference.
This year’s conference focused on BMC denizen John Cage, a 20th-century composer best known for his applications of Zen Buddhist ideas to musical composition, particularly concerning silence and indeterminacy. The new work, “Anechoia Memoriam,” is a memorial for people of color killed by law enforcement in the U.S.
For the score, Mark and Jonathan set the names of 180 unarmed people of color killed in recent decades by American law enforcement. The piece is performed on an invented instrument in which each letter typed on a typewriter plays notes on an acoustic piano. Each performance lasts seven hours. During this time the score, which is written on ticker tape, scrolls slowly by the typewriter. The silence of the piece is broken only through attention and participation. Any observer may take a seat at the typewriter and transcribe names into music by typing.