Phantasmic RadioThe alienation of the self, the annihilation of the body, the fracturing, dispersal, and reconstruction of the disembodied voice: the themes of modernism, even of modern consciousness, occur as a matter of course in the phantasmic realm of radio. In this original work of cultural criticism, Allen S. Weiss explores the meaning of radio to the modern imagination. Weaving together cultural and technological history, aesthetic analysis, and epistemological reflection, his investigation reveals how radiophony transforms expression and, in doing so, calls into question assumptions about language and being, body and voice. Phantasmic Radio presents a new perspective on the avant-garde radio experiments of Antonin Artaud and John Cage, and brings to light fascinating, lesser-known work by, among others, Valère Novarina, Gregory Whitehead, and Christof Migone. Weiss shows how Artaud's "body without organs" establishes the closure of the flesh after the death of God; how Cage's "imaginary landscapes" proffer the indissociability of techne and psyche; how Novarina reinvents the body through the word in his "theater of the ears." Going beyond the art historical context of these experiments, Weiss describes how, with their emphasis on montage and networks of transmission, they marked out the coordinates of modernism and prefigured what we now recognize as the postmodern. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
A+T Art actor aesthetic aleatory Allen anal Antonin Artaud apparatus Art & Text Art Brut artist audio body without organs Boulez broadcast Cage's chance operations Christof Migone cited claque composition concert create creative death disarticulation discourse drama Dubuffet écrits bruts edited electronic exists Experimental Music explains expression extreme Fónagy French Gallimard Glenn Gould glossolalia Gregory Whitehead human Ibid imagination Jean Dubuffet John Cage Judgment language letter libidinal linguistic listener Louis Wolfson Mallarmé manifestation means ment modernist montage musique concrète Nietzsche noise Oeuvres complètes paradox paranoid Paris percussion performance phantasms piano Pierre Pierre Boulez play poetic poetry possibilities Press radical radio radiophonic art recording rhetorical rhythm Rodez Schizo Schizophonica scream silence sonore sort sound effects speaking Special issue speech splicing structure studio suicide Surrealist tape theater of cruelty théâtre theatrical tion tongue trans transformed utilized Valère Novarina vive voix vocal voice Weiss word writing York