ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the conceptual framework outlined in 'Boredom and Danger'. In Satie's manifesto 'Boredom and Danger', written during the summer of 1966, the Fluxus composer and former Cage pupil Dick Higgins broached the topic through the lens of Satie's repetitive works. Another Satie's most passionate mid-century devotees, the controversial German sculptor and proto-performance artist Joseph Beuys. The chapter compares the Beuys and Cage is particularly salient with respect to problems of historicity and the contemporary 'loss of meaning', both effects of an ever-more thoroughly administered, instrumentalised modernity. As the two great optimists of post-war art, both played the role of religious healer as frequently as they played the role of artist, engaging in practices that were as much anthropological as they were art-historical in nature. It is therefore characteristic that both deploy Satie's works as spiritual, holistic remedies for the 'crisis' of meaning.
