NECSUS (Jan 2019)
Mid-twentieth century radio art: The ontological insecurity of the radio text
Abstract
In this article, I set out to examine the ontological instability of mid-twentieth century artistic works written for the medium of radio that derives from the tension between transient sound and permanent text. I explore how the evanescence commonly associated with sound in general and radio in particular caused mid-twentieth century radio practitioners like Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Tom Stoppard to strive for both the simplicity of a superficially intelligible aural text and the complexity stemming from the thematisation of ambiguity and epistemological uncertainty.