by Christof Migone
This book delineates a territory of investigation for sound art and its various manifestations through historical, theoretical, polemical and critical analyses of artistic, musical and literary works. In doing so, Migone gives radical definition to an auditory study that includes the complexity of silence and mutism, identity and abjecthood, and language and its stutterances. The recurring site of these stagings is the somatic under all its forms: embodied and disembodied, fragmented and amplified, vocal and mute.
Concrete sites that are investigated include: Antonin Artaud’s writings, Alvin Lucier’s recording I am sitting in a room, Erik Satie’s composition Vexations, Marina Abramovic’s performance Rhythm 0, Adrian Piper’s Untitled Performance for Max’s Kansas City, Melville’s short story Bartleby, the Scrivener, Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson’s documentary film First Contact, and John Cage’s composition 4’33”.
Christof Migone is an artist, curator and writer. He obtained an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design in 1996 and a PhD from the Department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University in 2007. He currently is a Lecturer at the Department of Visual Studies and the Director/Curator of the Blackwood Gallery (University of Toronto).