Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing? is a bedtime story.

Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing? John Cage's text is as pertinent now as it was then. In fact his incisive, clear comments and evaluations of Humanity and our place in this world seem to talking directly to the societies of the 21st Century.

The starting point is Cage's text Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?: four columns of text running side by side (the Lisbon version used a Portuguese translation I made with Marta Hugon). Each text is recorded separately, panned to a separate channel and played back through four speakers around the audience. The duration of the four tapes is exactly 60 minutes. That is the duration of the show.

While these four 'voices' lull the audience, other things happen. Through Chance operations, layer upon layer of sound, theatre, light, songs and images are distributed throughout the 60 minutes of the performance. A complex web of events that flow in and out of eachother, sometimes leading to silence and absolute stilness, sometimes leading to an overload of messages that renders invalid all attempts to communicate and understand. Just like abusy street. A windy moor.

Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing? is a cristalized lullaby, an invitation to breathe, a shared sleeping communion.

To read John Cage's Foreword and Instructions click here