Hannah Whitaker & Pierre Molinier

Inderminacy and interpretation. Those two notions are undoubtly two keys that apply to John Cage’s compositional (writing) principles just as well as to the eponymous series by US artist Hannah Whitaker and to the work of french photographer Pierre Molinier.
Both Pierre Molinier’s and Hannah Whitaker’s works are indeed governed by imagination, and, in echo to John Cage, by the same attempt to organize a serialized material (dismembered bodies by Molinier, light patterns in the case of Whitaker). In a 1965 interview, Cage said that, in seeking to build on the elements usually bound to rejection, he has always felt on the side of the very things that one should not do. Do not we face here a statement that summarizes the attempts of Molinier, the photographer-maker of collages- inventor?
It has also been said of Whitaker that she lets the process of imagemaking infiltrate intention, so th at chance becomes an equal partner in determining the final product and pay a tribute to Cage chances operations». Body for one, landscape for the other, thus become an object of fantasy, a playing field for imagination, a «cosa mentale»

April 25, 2013