Readings at Parkside:  
Iris Garden ~  
John Cage & William Gedney

The Parkside Lounge
317 East Houston Street
New York City
Sunday, November 22nd, 4pm

Sliding scale tickets are available HERE!

Please join us to celebrate the publication of Iris Garden: Stories by John Cage & Photos by William Gedney from Magic Hour Press. 

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 22ND 4PM

IRIS GARDEN
Stories JOHN CAGE
Photos WILLIAM GEDNEY

With readings by

REBECCA BENGAL
LEE ANN BROWN
MATT CONNORS
ANTHONY CUDAHY
JASON FULFORD
MAYA HARDINGE
JEFFREY LEPENDORF
TAMARA SHOPSIN
AMY SILLMAN
JORDAN WEITZMAN
MATT WOLF

& Music by

LORI SCACCO

Edited by Alec Soth
Designed by Hans Seeger

Like a mushroom hunting trip full of unexpected pleasures, Iris Garden combines 22 of John Cage’s stories with 44 of William Gedney’s photographs (including several of the composer himself) with an ingenious design mirroring Cage’s concept of chance.

Originally published in a small print run by Alec Soth’s independent press Little Brown Mushroom in 2013, this new edition brings a rare, long out-of-print work back into circulation. Soth—widely regarded as a major voice in contemporary photography—founded his press as a space to experiment with image and text. Iris Garden reflects that spirit, uniting two artists he has deeply admired in a collaboration that feels at once intimate, open-ended, and quietly radical.

My intention in putting the stories together in an unplanned way was to suggest that all things – stories, incidental sounds from the environment, and by extension, beings – are related, and that this complexity is more evident when it is not oversimplified by an idea of relationship in one person’s mind.
— John Cage

John Cage (1912–92) was one of the most influential and transformative figures in 20th-century music and art. A pioneer of chance operations, experimental composition and the use of silence—most famously in his work “4'33"”—Cage reshaped the boundaries of artistic practice, extending his ideas into writing, visual art and philosophy.

Working largely outside the commercial mainstream and recognized more fully after his death, William Gedney (1932–89) was an American photographer who developed a lyrical documentary style shooting across the United States, from rural Kentucky to San Francisco.