There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. —John Cage.

Silence is a double-edged concept. Nowadays silence is often used interchangeably with quietude. In the context of Zen for Film, silence indicates a lack of intentional sound, symbolism, or representational gestures. Instead, the conditions of the environment, often led by chance operations, take over a given visual, aural, or spatial silence. In this sense, the concept of silence unhinges the author-as-producer model. Any analysis of silence is inevitably indebted to John Cage, who formulated silence as unstructured time—as “purposeful purposelessness” (Cage, 1973). In Zen for Film, Paik’s silence lies in the “silencing” of the projected image that explicates the materiality of the filmic medium. Silence, then, might be grasped as a strategy that primarily serves to unveil and to uncover. This concept is at the heart of the collaborative nature of Fluxus events and allows for the recuperation of experimentation in the creative process. It is a paradoxical concept: silence in music, as in Cage’s 4’33”, reveals the essence of sound. Silencing of image in the films of Guy Debord and Tony Conrad and in the paintings of Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Ryman, and Kazimir Malevich call attention to the materiality underlying the intentional production of image. In addition to Zen for Film, Paik’s works such as Rembrandt Automatic and Point of Light apply silence as a strategy to deconstruct preconceived notions of image and vision. Silence, like nothingness, should be devoid of negative connotation, manifest in Cage’s optimistic assertion that “we need not fear these silences——we may love them.” —CA