The triennial Sound of a Cage is a collaboration of an interdisciplinary and professional art field. The event will take place in Stavanger, and curator is Liv Runesdatter/CARMA Contemporary Art, Music and Dance. The triennial is built up around the legacy of John Cage and his contemporaries and it combines art, music, design, performance, workshops, lectures and topical discussions. This third edition set focus on sound poetry.

The idea of “texts without words”, text as phonetic sound, detached from semantics, can be traced back to the Futurist and Dada movements in the 1920s and 30s. Kurt Schwitter’s Ursonata is one of the first known examples of sound poetry. The art form developed into different categories, such as simulateous poetry, concrete poetry, abstract poetry and visual poetry. In the beat cultures well-known names such as Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Brion Gysin started using cassette recordings. European examples were found in France, Italy and United Kingdom, and names such as Bob Cobbing in the UK and Henri Chopin in France were significant figures. In Sweden a peculiar form of sound poetry developed, known as “text-sound-composition”. Behind it were persons with links to Radio Sweden and Fylkingen-groups. Important names are Åke Hodell and Sten Hanson.