There is no soundtrack: Rethinking art, media, and the audio-visual contract

By Ming-Yuen S. Ma

There is no soundtrack is a study of how sound and image produce meaning in contemporary experimental media art by artists ranging from Chantal Akerman to Nam June Paik to Tanya Tagaq. It contextualises these works and artists through key ideas in sound studies: voice, noise, listening, the soundscape and more. The book argues that experimental media art produces radical and new audio-visual relationships challenging the visually dominated discourses in art, media and the human sciences. In addition to directly addressing what Jonathan Sterne calls ‘visual hegemony’, it also explores the lack of diversity within sound studies by focusing on practitioners from transnational and diverse backgrounds. As such, it contributes to a growing interdisciplinary scholarship, building new, more complex and reverberating frameworks to collectively sonify the study of culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Jun 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526142146

Book preview

List of figures

0.1 Peter Moore, Nam June Paik: Zen for Film, 1965. Gelatin silver print, paper size: 8 × 10 in. (20.3 × 25.4 cm), image size: 6 × 8 in. (15.2 × 20.3 cm). © 2020 Barbara Moore/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Image courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

0.2 Digital projection of Derek Jarman, Blue, 1993, original in 35 mm film. Installation view of the exhibition Contemporary Galleries: 1980 – Now. Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 16, 2011 – February 9, 2014. Photo: John Wronn. © 2019 Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.

0.3 Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, The Murder of Crows, 2008. Installation view, Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany, 2009. 98-channel audio installation including speakers, table, and chairs. Dimensions variable. © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Image Courtesy of the artists and Luhring Augustine, New York. Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna for the 2008 Biennale of Sydney. The installation was made possible with the generous support of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Freunde Guter Musik e.V. Berlin, The Canada Council, and Bowers & Wilkins Speakers. Photo by Roman Maerz.

1.1 Film still from Surname Viet Given Name Nam, 1989. Dir. Trinh T. Minh-ha. 108 mins, 16-mm film. © Moongift Films. Image courtesy of Moongift Films.

1.2 Video still from Rebirth of a Nation, 2008. Dir. Paul D. Miller. Video, 100 mins. © Paul D. Miller. Image courtesy of the artist.

1.3 Still from Rebirth of a Nation performance at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2004. © Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Photo: Michael Raz-Russo. Image courtesy of the artist.

1.4 Tanya Tagaq performing Nanook of the North (1915, dir. Robert Flaherty) in Toronto, 2014. © Sarah Rogers/Nunatsiaq News. Photo: Sarah Rogers. Image courtesy of the artist and Sarah Rogers/Nunatsiaq News.

1.5 Tanya Tagaq performing Nanook of the North at Dark Mofo 2018, Hobart, Australia. © DarkLab Media. Photo: Dark Mofo / Rémi Chauvin. Image courtesy of the artist and DarkLab Media.

2.1 Christian Marclay, Guitar Drag, 2000. Video projection, view #1, running time 14 minutes. © Christian Marclay. Image courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

2.2 Reconstructed model of the ear phonautograph, made for the Sound by Design exhibition at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Ottawa, 2017. Exhibition curated by Tom Everrett. © Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation.

2.3 Christian Marclay, From Hand to Ear, 1994. Cast beeswax, 41 1/2 × 8 × 7 1/4 in. (105.4 × 20.3 × 18.4 cm). © Christian Marclay. Image courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

2.4 Bruce Nauman, From Hand to Mouth, 1967. Wax over cloth,28 × 10 3/8 × 4 3/8 in. (71.1 × 26.4 × 11.1 cm). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund and Holenia Purchase Fund, in memory of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, and Museum Purchase, 1993. © 2019 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS). Image courtesy of Sperone Westwater, New York.

2.5 Christian Marclay, The Sound of Silence, 1988. Black and white photograph, 10 3/4 × 10 3/4 in. (26.8 × 26.8 cm); framed 12 × 12 in. (30 × 30 cm). © Christian Marclay. Photo: Adam Reich. Image courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

2.6 Christian Marclay, Vertebrate, 2000. Altered acoustic guitar, 11 × 26 1/2 × 15 1/2 in. (27.9 × 67.3 × 39.4 cm). © Christian Marclay. Image courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

2.7 Christian Marclay, Prosthesis, 2001. Silicone rubber and metal guitar stand, approx. 44 × 13 × 2 1/2 in. (111.7 × 33 × 6.4 cm.); installed: approx. 22 × 21 × 18 in. (55.9 × 53.3 × 45.7 cm). © Christian Marclay. Image courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

2.8 Isamu Noguchi, Death (Lynched Figure), 1934. Monel metal, wood and rope on metal armature. © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / ARS. Photo: Sara Wells.

2.9 Samuel Joseph Brown, Jr., The Lynching, 1934. Watercolor over graphite on cream wove paper, 12 3/4 × 9 in. (32.4 × 22.9 cm); sheet: 15 15/16 × 11 7/16 in (40.5 × 29.1 cm). Public Works of Art Project, on long-term loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art from the Fine Arts Collection, U.S. General Services Administration, 1934.

2.10 Edward Kienholz, Five Car Stud, 1969–72. © Edward Kienholz. Collection of Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, Sakura, Japan. Image courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA and The Pace Gallery, New York. Photo by Ken Gonzales-Day. Image courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

2.11 Ken Gonzales-Day, Marion, IN. (Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith), Erased Lynching series, 2004–19. © Ken Gonzales-Day. Image courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

2.12 Still from Billie Holiday's 1959 live performance on the BBC. Found on YouTube. Screenshot by author.

2.13 Lawrence Beitler, The Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. August 7, 1930, Marion, Indiana. Framed photograph with victim's hair. Image courtesy of James Allen and Twin Palms Publishers.

2.14 Detail of model, a part of the ear phonautograph reconstructed for the Sound by Design exhibition at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Ottawa. Exhibition curated by Tom Everrett. © Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation.

3.1 Lewis deSoto, AIR, 1989. Sound installation, installation view, Headland Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA, USA. © Lewis deSoto. Image courtesy of the artist.

3.2 Mary Lucier and Elizabeth Streb, MASS, 1991. Three-channel video installation. © Mary Lucier and Elizabeth Streb. Image courtesy of the artists.

3.3 Installation view of the exhibition Soundings: AContemporary Score. Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 16, 2011–February 9, 2014. Works from left, Carsten Nicolai, wellenwanne lfo, 2012; Christine Sun Kim, Scores and Transcripts series, 2012; Marco Fusinato, Mass Black Implosion, 2012. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2019 Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.

3.4 Stephen Vitiello, A Bell for Every Minute, 2010. Exhibition view from Soundings: A Contemporary Score, 2013. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2019 Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.

3.5 Florian Hecker, Affordance, 2013. Installation view from Soundings: A Contemporary Score, 2013. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2019 Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.

3.6 Exhibition view, William Anastasi: Sound Works, 1963–2013, 2013. Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College, New York. Photo: Louis Chan. Image courtesy of the Hunter College Art Galleries.

3.7 Exhibition view, William Anastasi: Sound Works, 1963–2013, 2013. Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College, New York. Photo: Louis Chan. Image courtesy of the Hunter College Art Galleries.

3.8 Exhibition view, William Anastasi: Sound Works, 1963–2013, 2013. Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College, New York. Photo: Louis Chan. Image courtesy of the Hunter College Art Galleries.

3.9 Janet Cardiff, The Forty Part Motet (A reworking of Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis 1556/1557), 2001. Forty loud speakers mounted on stands, placed in an oval, amplifiers, playback computer. Duration: 14 min. loop with 11 min. of music and 3 min. of intermission. Sung by Salisbury Cathedral Choir, recording and postproduction by SoundMoves, edited by George Bures Miller, produced by Field Art Projects. The Forty Part Motet by Janet Cardiff was originally produced by Field Art Projects with the Arts Council of England, Canada House, the Salisbury Festival and Salisbury Cathedral Choir, BALTIC Gateshead, The New Art Gallery Walsall, and the NOW Festival Nottingham. Dimensions variable, installation view Johanniterkirche, Feldkirch, 2005, Photo: Markus Tretter. © Janet Cardiff. Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

3.10 Emeka Ogboh, The Song of the Germans, 2015. Sound installation, installation view, The Power Plant, Toronto, 2018. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid. Image courtesy of The Power Plant.

3.11 Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne. © ACMI. Photo by Charlie Kinross. Image courtesy of ACMI.

3.12 View of ACMI gallery. © ACMI. Image courtesy of ACMI.

4.1 Film still of Fitzcarraldo, 1982. Dir. Werner Herzog. 35 mm film, 158 mins. © Werner Herzog. Image courtesy of Deutsche Kinemathek.

4.2 Public space occupation by Ultra-red in Griffith Park, 1997–98. © Ultra-red. Image courtesy of the artists.

4.3 Public space occupation by Ultra-red at the saFARi exhibition, organized by Foundation for Art Resources, Inc. (FAR), September 13–14, 1997. © Ultra-red. Image courtesy of the artists.

4.4 Elana Mann, Listening as (a) movement, 2013. Opening performance Decay/Decode by composer Allison Johnson. © Elana Mann. Image courtesy of the artist.

4.5 Elana Mann, Listening as (a) movement, 2013. Listening Instrument Workshop with Alex Braidwood. © Elana Mann. Image courtesy of the artist.

4.6 Elana Mann, Listening as (a) movement, 2013. Calling 411! A dialog with Youth Advocated from DayOne and the NW Commission. © Elana Mann. Image courtesy of the artist.

4.7 Elana Mann, Listening as (a) movement, 2013. Drone demonstration by Matias Viegener at the Do Not Track: Thinking about Privacy event. © Elana Mann. Image courtesy of the artist.

4.8 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Frequency and Volume, Relational Architecture 9, 2003. Shown at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2012. © Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Photo: Natalia Puzisz. Image courtesy of the artist.

4.9 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Frequency and Volume, Relational Architecture 9, 2003. Shown at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2012. © Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Photo: Johnna Arnold. Image courtesy of the artist.

4.10 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Frequency and Volume, Relational Architecture 9, 2003. Shown at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2012. © Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Photo: Johnna Arnold. Image courtesy of the artist.

5.1 Performance of Music for Wilderness Lake (1979, composer: R. Murray Schafer) in 2014 at Laguna Gloria in Austin, TX. Directed by Steve Parker as a part of The Contemporary Austin's Sound Series. © Brian Fitzsimmons.

5.2 Performance of Music for Wilderness Lake (1979, composer: R. Murray Schafer) in 2014 at Laguna Gloria in Austin, TX. Directed by Steve Parker as a part of The Contemporary Austin's Sound Series. © Brian Fitzsimmons.

5.3 Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Alter Bahnhof Video Walk, 2012. Video Walk. Duration: 26 minutes. Produced for dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel Germany. © Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Image courtesy of the artists and Luhring Augustine, New York.

5.4 Ragnar Kjartansson and The National, A Lot of Sorrow, 2013–14. Single-channel video. Duration: 6 hours, 9 minutes, 35 seconds. A Lot of Sorrow took place at MoMA PS1, as part of Sunday Sessions. Installation view Luhring Augustine Bushwick, NY (September 11 – December 21, 2014). © Ragnar Kjartansson and The National. Image courtesy of the artists, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik.

Acknowledgments

I remember a department meeting that took place when I was an assistant professor. One of the senior faculty complained about the quality of the sound in our students’ media projects. They said, ‘we should teach more sound classes’. Then they, and everyone else at the meeting, turned and looked at me – I was the junior member in the department, and its only faculty of color. I responded: ‘Sure, I'll teach a new class on sound.’ It has been many years since that meeting, and by now I have designed and taught an entire array of courses on sound theory and history. But I trace the genesis of my interest in studying sound and eventually writing this book back to that meeting. I would like to start this book by thanking my then colleagues for their inadvertent setting of my research agenda for more than a decade since. Not long after I began researching and teaching about sound, my colleague Tran T. Kim-Trang asked me to write about her experimental video Blindness Series (1992–2006). This resulted in a series of essays which were my first scholarly work on sound. Although these essays are not a part of this book, I am nonetheless indebted to Tran for inspiring my interest in the relationship between sound culture and experimental media art. The students who took my courses in sound studies during the years when this book was conceptualized and written similarly contributed to many ideas that are discussed in the following chapters. I am grateful for their enthusiasm about the subject and their ever inquisitive and brilliant minds that helped shape my thinking on sound.

There are many who advised, commented, evaluated, and inspired what became There is no soundtrack. I offer my gratitude to all of you; and apologize for any unintentional yet inevitable omissions. I would like to thank Amelia Jones and Marsha Meskimmon, co-editors of the ‘Rethinking Art's Histories’ series, who invited the book to be a part of the series before it was even completed. I deeply appreciate your support and advice. I thank the editors and staff at Manchester University Press: Emma Brennan, Alun Richards, Claudette Johnson, Deborah Smith, and others for your diligent editorial, production, and promotional work on the book. Apollonia Galvan provided valuable research and editorial assistance. To my readers named (Jonathan Sterne, Caleb Kelly) and anonymous: this book benefited tremendously from your interdisciplinary expertise, constructive criticism, and thoughtful suggestions. I would like to also thank the media artists: William Anastasi, Ale Bachlechner, Phyllis Baldino, Natalie Bookchin, Dove Bradshaw, Richard Chartier, Lewis deSoto, Jeanne C. Finley, Bill Fontana, Richard Garet, John Grzinich, Micol Hebron, Nelson Henricks, Kurt Hentschlager, Janna Holmstedt, Rashmi Kaleka, Christine Sun Kim, Jacob Kirkegaard, Paul Kos, David Linton, Francisco López, Mary Lucier, Jason Lujan, Elana Mann, pali meursault, Christof Migone, Haroon Mirza, Carsten Nicolai, Camille Norment, Yann Novak, Steve Peters, Steve Roden, John Sanborn, Peter Sarkisian, Robin Rimbaud (Scanner), Julia Scher, Anne Katrine Senstad, Jennifer Steinkamp, Ultra-red, Katie Vida, Stephen Vitiello, Hong-Kai Wang, Peter Weibel, Monika Weiss, Jana Winderen, Paul Wong, and Pamela Z who took time to discuss their art practice with me, often transnationally and across different time zones. Many of them also provided suggestions and contacts for other artists. The staff at Edouard Malingue Gallery, Lisson Gallery, Luhring Augustine Gallery, Marian Goodman Gallery, Paula Cooper Gallery, Skarstedt Gallery, Sperone Westwater Gallery, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, as well as the many studio managers, assistants, and other staff of the artists who helped with scheduling, queries, and organizational details – I apologize that I do not have the space to thank you individually. Chris Harris, Head of Exhibition Production and Sarah Tutton, Senior Curator at Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI); Chris Christion, Gallery Manager at the Claremont Graduate School Art Galleries; Peter Gould, former Assistant Director in Exhibition Design and Production at the Hammer Museum; Daniela Lieja Quintanar, Curator and Andrew Magno Freire, Exhibition and Operations Manager at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions); Ulanda Blair, Curator of Moving Images and Kieran Champion, Senior Manager of Installations and Displays at M+ Museum; Ciara Ennis, Director/Curator and Angelica Perez-Aguirre, Exhibition Preparator at Pitzer College Art Galleries; Rebecca McGrew, Senior Curator and Gary Murphy, Preparator at Pomona College Museum of Art also took time out of their busy schedules to talk to me about the acoustic architecture, exhibition design, and preparatory practices at their respective institutions. The collective experience and experiential knowledge of these media artists and arts professionals was vital to my research for Chapter 3 of this book, and generally influenced the project as a whole. Stuart Comer, Chief Curator, Barbara London, former Associate Curator, and Erica Papernik, Curatorial Assistant at the Department of Media and Performance Art, The Museum of Modern Art; Sarah Russin, Executive Director at LACE; Nelson Tsui, my former student and now Art Technician at M+ generously lent their expertise, knowledge, and institutional access. Additionally, Alfred Cramer, Robert Crouch, Jennifer Doyle, Mike D'Errico, Ryan Engley, Richard Fung, Sherin Gurguis, Elizabeth Hamilton, Kristy H.A. Kang, Lori Kido Lopez, Laura Marks, Amitis Motevalli, Vincent Pham, Nathallie Rachlin, Dont Rhine, Juliana Snapper, and Holly Willis all helped or advised me in a myriad of different ways. Thank you!

There is no soundtrack is supported by the Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program, as well as Pitzer College's Research and Awards, Scholar-in-Residence, and Summer Research Assistantship programs. The Intercollegiate Media Studies and Asian American Studies departments at the Claremont Colleges also provided invaluable institutional resources and comradery.

Lastly, I spent much of the time during the research, conception, writing, and editing of this book with my mother, Professor Ma Chung Ho-Kei, who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease, first in London and then in Hong Kong. As the disease progressed, my mother, who was known for her loud commanding voice, gradually stopped speaking and remembering. As much as the pages of this book are filled with sounds, they are also infused with her silence. For this reason, this book is dedicated to my mother and her memories.

Prologue: film without images

Let's begin with a simple question: if film is understood to be an audio-visual medium, when there are no images in a film, is it still a film? This question is evocative of the famous philosophical thought experiment: if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, has it still produced a sound? Interestingly, both these questions are concerned with sound and hearing.

There is no soundtrack is a book that pays close attention to auditory perception, while challenging dominant cultural assumptions about audio-visual relationships in media. When I ask whether a film without images can still be considered a film, I am also questioning visuality itself. Specifically, why is visuality almost always assumed to be the primary conveyor of meaning, while a film's soundtrack is, at best, the supporting player? An afterthought? This book asks these questions, and extends its examination and redefinition of audio-visual relationships in media into the larger contexts of cinema, media, and art through specific case studies in experimental media art. In this prologue, I begin my examination with three works: Zen for Film (1962–64) by Nam June Paik, Blue (1993) by Derek Jarman, and The Murder of Crows (2008), a project by the collaborative partnership of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. My discussion of these case studies introduces many of the book's main questions and debates and serves as an exemplar of its ethos. These three works were all created and exhibited outside of what is conventionally understood as the cinema. Yet they are all connected to it materially, formally, narratively, and contextually. In my discussion that follows, sound emerges as a central concern. These films without images are defined by their soundtracks even when – in one of the cases – there is no sound. In demonstrating radical new ways of how sound and image can relate to each other, these films without images begin to challenge, expand, and redefine audio-visuality. They tell us something new and exciting about how we perceive, experience, and understand film, cinema, media, and art through our sensorium. They set the terms of how sound will be understood in relation to visuality, as well as the other senses, in There is no soundtrack.

Zen for Film

Korean American media artist Nam June Paik made Zen for Film, his first work in film, in the early 1960s, during his involvement with the international avant-garde movement Fluxus (Figure 1). At this time, Paik was transitioning from his training in music composition to a performance and media art career. It precedes his influential work in video that earned him the moniker ‘father of video art’.¹ In 1964, Jonas Mekes mentioned Paik's film in his ‘Movie Journal’ column for The Village Voice. In the article, titled ‘Spiritualization of the Image’, Mekes calls for a ‘cinema of our mind’, in which ‘we give up all movies and we become movies’.² He probably saw Zen for Film at one of its early screenings in a six-week series of Fluxus ‘concerts’ in New York City. Like other Fluxus works, Zen for Film is significantly different from how film is conventionally understood to be: it is a 16 mm clear film leader that, as artist and media critic Herman Asselberghs describes it, has ‘no script, no narrative, no sets, no actors, no sound, no camera, no montage’.³ In other words, it has none of the cinematic elements expected in a film. However, in its material properties, Zen for Film is very much a film: it exists as a strip of celluloid that has to be shown with a film projector and screen. Its physical requirements for screening – light for the projection and a physical space to project in – are also filmic. Additionally, its materiality as a film is evident in the dust and scratches that accumulate on the individual prints, each inscribed by its own history of screenings and handling. Conversely, the running time – an aspect very much regulated by the film and television industries today – is unspecified in Zen for Film, and its screenings have ranged from 8 to 20 minutes to an hour.⁴ According to Asselberghs, how long the film is shown may have something to do with the presence of Paik himself at the screening. In an often-reproduced film still, Paik can be seen standing directly in front of the projection, casting his shadow on the white screen, an action that would not be tolerated in a conventional cinema.⁵ Although Paik presented Zen for Film at screenings and film festivals in the 1960s, recent presentations of the work have been as an art object or gallery-based installation with the projector visible and the film showing on a loop, which further complicates the question of its duration. Furthermore, digital versions of the work can now be found streaming online, and a number of contemporary artists have produced re-makes of it both digitally and in celluloid.⁶

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0.1 Peter Moore, Nam June Paik: Zen for Film, 1965. Gelatin silver print, paper size: 8 × 10 in. (20.3 × 25.4 cm), image size: 6 × 8 in. (15.2 × 20.3 cm).

The clear film leader of Zen for Film does not have an optical or magnetic track for sound, and it has no designated soundtrack. The sound that the machinery of the projector makes accompanies each screening of this supposedly ‘silent’ film. Zen for Film is often discussed as Paik's homage to the composer John Cage. Paik first met Cage at the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music in Germany, where Cage was the guest artist during the summer of 1958. Cage influenced Paik to develop what he calls ‘action music’, and was the subject and inspiration for a number of Paik's compositions and performances from this period, including Homage to John Cage: Music for Audiotapes and Piano (1959) and Etude for Pianoforte (1960).⁷ However, it is Cage's famous composition 4’33" (1952) that Zen for Film is most often compared to, as a musical inspiration for its filmic silence.⁸ According to media scholar Douglas Kahn, Cage's influence on contemporary music, art, and culture lies in his ‘shifting the production of music from the site of utterance to that of audition’.⁹ In 4’33", where no conventional musical note is produced during the 4-minute and 33-second performance, all sound becomes music. This musicalization of sounds, as Kahn calls it, is based not on the musical performance but on listening. So 4’33" is not, in fact, a work about silence, as it is often understood to be, but rather a performance that amplifies the impossibility of absolute silence because music is all sound and listening makes it always sound.¹⁰ Following Kahn's argument that Cage's 4’33" effectuates a kind of ‘panaurality’, can Paik's filmic homage be considered a ‘pancinematic’ representation? That is to say, the blank screen projected by Zen for Film is all image, while its absence of a designated soundtrack opens up the film to all the sounds that occur during a screening. However, as French filmmaker Robert Bresson writes: ‘THE SOUNDTRACK INVENTED SILENCE’, and film sound theorist Michel Chion points out that true silence is very rare in films.¹¹ Additionally, Kahn points out that Cagean silence is ‘dependent from the very beginning in silencing’.¹² He writes: ‘When [Cage] hears music everywhere, other phenomena go unheard. When he celebrates noise, he also promulgates noise abatement. When he speaks of silence, he also speaks of silencing.’¹³ What other silences and silencing can be heard in Zen for Film?

Blue

British filmmaker Derek Jarman's Blue is another film without images; or rather, it consists of a single image: a blue screen that is accompanied by a complex and multilayered soundtrack (Figure 2). Completed months before Jarman's death from AIDS-related complications and premiered at the Venice Biennale in 1993, Blue was also released that same year in theaters as a feature-length 35-mm film.¹⁴ Blue's film score was composed by long-time Jarman collaborator Simon Fisher Turner, with contributions by Brian Eno, Coil, Miranda Sex Garden, Momus, and other musicians. Voiceover narration was read by John Quentin, Nigel Terry, Tilda Swinton, and Jarman himself and mixed with location sound and sound effects.¹⁵ While Blue is often discussed as an art film or essay film, its origin within Jarman's oeuvre is heterogeneous, intersectional, and often times non-filmic.¹⁶ Music scholar Tim Lawrence writes: ‘Blue is a plural last work. In its refusal of closure, the meanings of AIDS are kept in flux, recognized to be beyond adequate representation … Blue is also plural in form: it is simultaneously a film, a painting, a radio play, a soundtrack, a gay autobiography, and a book.’¹⁷ In fact, after its premiere as a film, it was broadcast on television (by Channel 4, one of its funders) and simulcast on radio (by BBC Radio 3) in the United Kingdom. When Jarman himself first mentioned the idea for a blue film in 1989, it was as a television program on the French artist Yves Klein, whose International Klein Blue (IKB) is one of the consistent formal elements in the project, and is reproduced as its blue screen.¹⁸ In addition to Klein and IKB, this project, named Blueprint or Bliss during the late 1980s and early 1990s, was organized around other evolving, eclectic ideas, such as a sound recording of the actor Matt Dillon's heartbeat.¹⁹ In 1991, Jarman and Swinton performed Symphonie Monotone at an AIDS benefit screening of Jarman's earlier film The Garden (1990). In this pre-screening performance, Jarman and Swinton recited quotations from various writers on the theme of ‘blue’ on stage while creating resonating sounds by running their wet fingers on the rim of wine glasses, Fisher Turner and a group of live musicians playing ‘gentle, almost hippie-style music’ as accompaniment, and Jody Graber, a young boy actor in The Garden, periodically ran out into the audience and handed them blue and gold painted pebbles.²⁰ Different versions of this performance were also staged in Bari, Ghent, Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo.²¹ In addition to the film's multimedia trajectory, even its blue screen has had different material iterations. A 35-mm close-up image of one of Klein's IKB paintings at the Tate Gallery was projected during Symphonie Monotone.²² Subsequent performances utilized imageless blue film leader and blue gel for the projection, while a blue postcard could be requested by mail to accompany the Radio 3 broadcast. During the early 1990s, Jarman made lab-generated blue film reels (most likely colored leader) to fundraise for the project. On the other hand, the blue screen in the 35-mm print seemed to have been first generated electronically as a video image, and then transferred to 35-mm film for theatrical release.²³ Today, Blue is most commonly distributed as a DVD. Like Zen for Film, there are also various authorized and unauthorized copies of the film streaming online, where their digital inscription is layered on top of the materiality of the film print used in the transfer to DVD.²⁴

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0.2 Derek Jarman, Blue, 1993. DVD projection, 79 min., looped.

The openness and medium instability of the blue screen lend many possible readings to the imagery in Blue: an homage, a visual pun, a condition of visual deficiency called the Ganzfield Effect, an autobiographical reflection of a person with HIV/AIDS, a queer audio-visuality beyond the hegemonic confines of ‘the scopic viability of modern gay identity’, and a few others.²⁵ This openness also relocates Blue's discursive power to its soundtrack, and especially to its voiceover narration. According to Fisher Turner, its soundtrack was structured around the recorded narration and dialogue.²⁶ Without any image–sound synchronization or a visible diegetic space, Blue is free of cinematic realism's representational codes. Its soundscape is described by film scholar Steven Dillon as a space of ‘fluid and instantaneous movement between radically disconnected points’.²⁷ The narrators in Blue are similarly undefined visually and spatially, yet quite specific vocally.²⁸ Their disembodiment lends their voice an authority that feminist film theorist Mary Ann Doane attributes to a ‘radical otherness’ that exists outside of conventional diegetic space.²⁹ The role that these voices perform in Blue recall the figure of the montreur d'images (picture lecturer) in early cinema. According to Chion, the montreur d'images’ voice has the power to conjure images, a power inherited by the modern filmic device of the voiceover.³⁰ In Blue, the openness of the blue screen amplifies this conjuring power of the voice, especially when it is supported by the film's sound effects, musical score, and location sound that evoke the ocean, wind, hospital ward, night club, café, and other scenarios mentioned in the voiceover narration. In addition to the contrasting audio-visual relationship between its cinematic soundtrack and minimalist, painterly image, Blue's textual and performative origins, its autobiographical abstraction, and its multiplatform existence as radio play, book, film, digital stream, and installation make it difficult to ascertain whether it is a film in the cinematic or materialist sense. Even Jarman himself seems puzzled on how Blue became a film.³¹ Film theorist Peter Wollen writes: ‘Speaking about Blue, Jarman once remarked, I always said I would end up painting again. And I suppose in a sense that's what I'm doing.’³² So perhaps the productive question to ask here is not whether Blue, a film without images, is still a film, but rather: when did it become a film?

The Murder of Crows

Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller collaborated on The Murder of Crows, an installation that premiered at the Biennale of Sydney in 2008 (Figure 3). The work, which is broadcast on ninety-eight to one hundred speakers, is composed of about eight hundred digital audiotracks, controlled by a computer and played through the speakers arranged in and around the audience to form its soundscape.³³ The generic black speakers are placed on the floor, on folding chairs, mounted on stands, and hung from the ceiling of a given exhibition space. The work's only visual cinematic flourish is in the antique gramophone horn, re-purposed as the speaker broadcasting Cardiff's narration. The horn sits on an equally battered red folding card table, often spot-lit theatrically, in the middle of the installation space.³⁴ Otherwise, The Murder of Crows contains no visual images, save for the dramatic architecture that housed several versions of the installation.³⁵ The 30-minute work is structured around accounts of three dreams narrated by Cardiff and incorporates an eclectic array of musical interludes ranging from traditional Tibetan prayers, to a Russian marching choir, to an aria about a severed leg, to a lullaby sung by Cardiff to her adopted Nepalese daughter.³⁶ The musical score includes compositions by Freida Abtan, Aleksandr Aleksandrov, Orion Miller, Tilman Ritter, and Cardiff Miller, and the orchestral score is played by the Deutsches Film Orchester Babelsberg, conducted by Günter Joseck, with contributions by other musicians. In addition to the musical score, The Murder of Crow's soundtrack also incorporates sound effects