Shells, Bells, Steps and Silences

John Cage's 4'33" (four minutes, thirty-three seconds) — a score, which instructs the musician to abstain from playing his or her instrument for the three movements of its titled duration — is often described as a work based in silence. Of course, the argument is that sound is the project's actual centerpiece, as the noise typically resigned to the background suddenly comes forward. Anticipation frames an environment commonly ignored, so that subtlety, in fact, becomes the found object.

Steve Roden's intricate Shells, Bells, Steps And Silences, on view at Hollywood's LACE Gallery, makes reference to Cage and 4'33" specifically, but the real overlap, it seems, is the way in which Roden's project likewise manages to put on display precisely those sounds, objects and sentiments which are most often overlooked or otherwise put in storage instead of on stage.

Specifically, Roden's work is made of three interwoven parts: a collection of sea shells that he received from the estate of modern dancer Martha Graham; his notes from a month-long residency at the Walter Benjamin archive at the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin; and his daily performance of Cage's 4'33" over the course of an entire year.

To understand how Roden breaks with chronology for Shells, Bells, Steps And Silences, it's helpful to know the actual sequence of events, or slow-motion domino effect, leading up to the project: In October 2011, while at the Benjamin archive, Roden, who speaks no German, found instead that he was picking up the language of Benjamin's color-coded symbols — visuals that the exhibition likens to "the graphic notations avant-garde composers were exploring during the 1960s." Among the better-known such graphic "notators" is John Cage. Incidentally, by the time Roden had arrived at the Archive, he was already ten months into the twelve he was devoting to daily performances of 4'33" (many 4'33" performances by Roden where consequently held at the archive, unbeknownst perhaps to anyone but Roden). A month later, upon his return back to LA, Roden found a delivery of two large boxes, containing seashells and other small objects belonging to Martha Graham.

In a single but spacious gallery room, Roden's work audibly and visually represents the unplanned and unpredictable confluence of these three events. A score whispers in the language of Cage's symbols for actions, objects, and their relationships; simultaneously, a three-channel video of 40 short performance pieces features many objects from Graham's estate, some of them used as instruments. The three channel audio piece and the video clips meet and separate at chance intervals, further blurring the line between coincidence and significance. Together, this is the show's title work: Shells, Bells, Steps And Silences.

Equally as powerful, however, is a single channel piece titled Everything She Left Behind That Fits In My Hand: a looping video of Roden's hand as it opens and closes against backgrounds of different colors, to reveal then "consume" the small objects Graham left behind — her tiny figurines, little toys, and seashells. On a smaller screen nearby, a black and white postcard of the interior of the Siena Cathedral, which Roden found in Benjamin's archive, is pulled apart, put together, colored and stripped of color again.

This exhibition does refer to its own process of building. But while it's certainly interesting to know the story of its conception, such knowledge is by no means a prerequisite. The work stands on its own, a kind of butterfly net for otherwise fleeting significances and observed happenstances. The seashell, for example, represents an object whose habitat is no longer an ocean, but, presumably, a box in the attic. The shell no longer runs the risk of being swallowed by the sea, but rather by archives, by time, by the fact that the number of people who care about it will continue to diminish. Likewise, it is easier to quote from Walter Benjamin's words than his unfamiliar language of symbols and colors. Like Graham's seashells or an old postcard, Benjamin's visual language is also "buried alive" in storage. But much like the "background" noise that suddenly comes to be regarded as a concert in 4'33", these objects and icons — visual "white noise" — become the main conversation of Roden's work.

It was interesting to show up for the opening reception of Shells, Bells, Steps And Silences, when the regular ta-da! sound of a gallery in full swing was at full blast (that is, people talking about their daily lives with friends, and not necessarily about the work in front of them).

Roden shrugged at me, resigned to the fact that, for the moment, the project was not going to experience the quiet and contemplative setting that it would on any other day. But as the gallery doors eventually closed and the space grew progressively more silent, the exhibition's audio component came to the foreground, and the eyes readjusted to see art rather than people looking at art. My experience benefitted from the contrast. The ear, primed for the sound of humans, now heard their absence instead. And absence takes on a loud and cohesive tone in Roden's project: the absence of Graham and Benjamin, yes, but also the absence of control over chance, meaning, and spontaneity. And while some people are undoubtedly relieved when a noisy room suddenly grows quiet and free of distractions, arguably the more common reaction is one of anxiety or maybe solitude. The party's over.

So perhaps the reason why some objects are stored but rarely looked at (and never thrown away), why some sounds are heard but rarely listened to, is because they act as symbols of precisely that kind of discomfort, no matter how beautiful or romantic it may be: the discomfort of nostalgia and memory among them, the unpredictability of chance, and, surely, the discomfort of hearing another day as it naturally passes by. Katya Tylevich

Through 16 September
Shells, Bells, Steps and Silences
LACE Gallery
Hollywood, Los Angeles