Collectable

Without Making a Sound. SILENCE in the MACBA Collection

The Collectables of the Year Thirty

work
Tres

Tijeras para cortar el silencio

Although silence is defined as the absence of noise, it has nothing to do with the absence of communication. On the contrary, as many artists have proved. John Cage, for instance, who was interested in the role of randomness, indeterminacy and chance in creation, argued that there is no such thing as total silence, for everything that occurs between one sound and another is also music. In the wake of Cage’s significant innovations, the Catalan artist Tres, who never revealed his name, focused all his work on the idea of silence. While taking part in a pseudo-Dadaist show in 1985 as a tribute to Francis Picabia, this multidisciplinary sound artist experienced something so radical that, from then on, he decided to work in anonymity. A new silent period during which he organised all sorts of actions, such as concerts or silent cocktail parties, blackouts in emblematic buildings or performances with his face covered. Tres used silence as a strategy for achieving a rhetorical and productive void: to fight against a world trapped in hyperactivity and to suspend all physical and mental activity. You may ‘listen’ to his works in the MACBA Collection.