5 Books

A Mycological Foray

by John Cage

This is one of the most abstract books I've ever come across. It's an art piece in book form, combining sound and fungi. During the Great Depression, as a broke musician, Cage started foraging for survival. Later, foraging became a serious hobby. At the core of Cage’s pedagogy was listening. He embraced Zen teachings about the importance of being receptive to the world, which offered an escape from society’s ego-driven enclosure.

Quantum Listening

by Pauline Oliveros

For me, Pauline Oliveros is the most relevant and coherent contemporary artist. In response to the anti-war movements of the 1960s, Oliveros began to expand the way she made music, experimenting with meditation, movement and activism in her compositions. Quantum Listening is a manifesto for listening as activism as it proposes Deep Listening as the foundation for a radically transformed social matrix: one in which compassion and peace form the basis.

Broken Music

by Ursula Block & Michael Glasmeier

I have always questioned the boundaries between visual arts and music and have made it a personal goal to blur them. Broken Music is a go-to compendium for records created by visual artists. It focuses on recordings, record-objects, artwork for records, and record installations made by thousands of artists between WWII and 1989, including some of my favourites such as Theodor W. Adorno, László Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Duchamp, Laurie Anderson, Sol Lewitt, Yoko Ono and others.

An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics

by Daphne Oram

Daphne Oram was a pioneer in electronic music. When access to equipment, technology and resources was mainly in the hands of men in universities, radio stations and well-equipped studios, she built a studio in her living room. She developed the Oramics, a machine that generates sounds according to drawings, blurring the boundaries between visual arts and music whilst empowering female and domestic narratives.

Faust

by Anne Imhof

A performance, a catalogue, a record. Faust by Anne Imhof is all of them. An art piece that transcends boundaries. Here I chose the record as a register of the work presented at the German Pavillion at the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. In her work, there are no boundaries; there is the encounter of music, writing, fashion, philosophy, visual arts, and life. Anne is, for me, the most important contemporary artist of our times and, luckily, a dear and inspiring friend.