Pope.L: 25 Hours of Silence

A dark-skinned older man sits at a table illuminated by a desk lamp on an otherwise pitch-black stage. He looks at one sheet of paper and tosses another to the floor.

William Pope.L, Cage Unrequited, 2013, New York

Photo: Paula Court courtesy of Pope.L and Performa

The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now closed this past weekend with Cage Unrequited, a 25-hour-long performance piece by William Pope.L. Throughout the course of the day and the night, artists and organizations from across Chicago were invited to the MCA to participate in the project, a marathon reading of John Cage’s landmark book Silence: Lectures and Writings. We’ve rounded up a few of the highlights from the evening. As you may have guessed, as the night went on, things got a little strange.

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Virtue Signal Podcast · Cage Unrequited

Theater of absurd in the final hour of Pope.L’s Cage-athon @mcachicago pic.twitter.com/copqkCteJq

— Michelle Litvin (@michellelitvin) November 22, 2015