Tuning in to the Neo-Avant-Garde
Ghent University, Ghent (Belgium), 28-29 November 2018
In the years when the neo-avant-garde emerged, radio was a prominent medium, which offered an unexpected forum not just for art criticism but also for artistic practices, especially in the form of the radio play. Moreover, in the wake of the historical avant-garde, the neo-avant-garde has a strong interest in aural media, in the seemingly autonomous power of sound and voice. Therefore, it is not surprising that postwar avant-garde artists and literary writers in particular started experimenting with the radio play, supported by theories from thinkers such as Rudolf Arnheim, Walter Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht.
Still, it is remarkable how widespread the neo-avant-garde affinity with audiophonic art actually is. For innovative artists all across Europe and the rest of the world, the radio play provided a playground to think about the semiotic power of the auditive domain, and to challenge artistic conventions as well as the distinctions between different media and genres. Literary writers Ernst Jandl and Friederike Mayröcker created the stereophonic piece of art ‘Five Man Humanity’ in 1968. In 1979, the American avant-garde composer John Cage created Roaratorio, a radio play for electronic tapes, Irish folk music, and voice. In the Netherlands, the experimental poets Lucebert and Bert Schierbeek wrote pieces for the radio. And the French OuLiPo author Georges Perec once said that he found new solutions for his writerly questions in the ‘intrinsic space of the radio drama’.
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