Listening to people talk can be unbearable when they are mindless people with nothing to say, but of course a pure delight if they are, for instance, John Cage and Morton Feldman.
Between 1966 and 1967 Cage and Feldman recorded a number of conversations, which were broadcast on the radio in New York as “radio happenings”. Starting out with Feldman’s trip to the beach, where he was assaulted by hordes of transistor radios blaring rock music, the conversations traverse all manner of topics — yet always enthralling. If you’ve never listened to their radio happenings you are doing yourself a great disservice. So go ahead and listen to them: One, Two, Three, Four,Five.
In London, William English has had a series on the radio there for years, his shows feature a variety of music and, most interestingly, numerous interviews with artists. Experimental filmmakers are frequent on the program, as English is himself a filmmaker; some of his 16 mm films distributed by Light Cone have been digitized and are seen streaming on the side of his website. Interviews with Rose Lowder, Nicky Hamlyn and Peter Gidal talk about “several anxiety inducing incidents involving lost books” are all highlights.
ArtOnAir.org has available the Voices of the Underground series, recorded by Film-makers Cooperative and WPS1. Peter Kubelka, Michael Snow, Mike Kuchar, Jonas Mekas, and more…