4’33

2011, video, 04:33 min.

The act of asserting oneself in an international environment, the difficulties of emigration in different eras, and the relationship between family members’ faiths are nuanced by the video work 4’33, which is a clear reference to John Cage's defining work of postwar conceptual art. Cage’s so-called silent piece consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. The visual material used in Marcell Esterházy’s work was created by the artist's uncle, who defected to Vienna as a teenager and there recorded a 1982 Rolling Stones concert with a camera that could not record sound. So the most important part of the concert – the music – was lost.