Thursday, November 27th, 2014, 19.00 (opening)
MAX NEUHAUS
American Can I Sound Performance I
Performers: Everybody who's interested
American Can
Sound Performance
American Can is a piece in which a large number of any single product manufactured or distributed by
the American Can Company is distributed on the ground, in a large crowd. The quantity of the product
used must be at least enough to completely blanket the area of distribution with one layer. The ground
upon which the product is distributed should be hard enough to insure that a sound is made when the
product is bounced or slid along it. Each piece is labelled with a version title and the words AMERICAN
CAN and Max Neuhaus Sept' 66.
[Max Neuhaus, A Max Sampler, in: Source. Music of the Avant-garde, 1966-1973, issue 5, January 1969]
American Can was premiered at the Central Park in New York on September 9th, 1966, as part of the 4th
Annual New York Avant Garde Festival.
MAX NEUHAUS
Max Neuhaus was born in 1939 in Texas, and spent his childhood in Fishkill, New York. He began his
studies in music at the Manhattan School of Music under Paul Prince’s mentorship. In 1958, he met John
Cage, and this encounter determined his decision to become a professional percussionist. After a solo
tour in Europe in 1965, Neuhaus started developing projects that went beyond the strictly musical
realm; among them were site-specific pieces that he was the first to call “sound installations.” In 1968,
as he started a research residency at the Bell Laboratories, Neuhaus ceased performing as a musician
and fully devoted himself to sound art. Since then, his work has been exhibited internationally in
museums and galleries, including solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1978); Musée d’art
moderne de la ville de Paris (1983); and the Kunsthalle Bern (1989). He was also included in Documentas
6 (1977) and 9 (1992), Kassel, Germany; the Whitney Biennial, New York (1983); and the Venice Biennale
(1999). In 2008, an exhibition of Neuhaus’s drawings was organized by the Menil Collection, Houston,
which coincided with the inauguration of a new installation, Sound Line. Neuhaus passed away in
February 2009 in Italy.
[http://www.diaart.org/exhibitions/artistbio/91]
http://www.max-neuhaus.info/