Anne Zeitz - From MaxFeed to Radio Net – The radio projects of Max Neuhaus

Média Médiums

Working as a percussionist, notably for John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Max Neuhaus turned his attention, starting in 1966, to creating objects, walks, installations and sound exchange platforms. If his small electronic object Max-Feed (1966) is still involved with mechanically jamming radio-frequencies, Neuhaus soon turned to the exchange potential inherent in the medium of radio. From then on he produced projects for and with local and national radio stations, such as Public Supply (1966-1973) and Radio Net (1977), by linking their networks to telephone lines. These acoustical experiments which are both anonymous and collective, belong to Neuhaus' interest in the social dimension of both the radio and telephone. By bringing these two media together, Neuhaus worked hard to give "the impulse and the means to create an international sound exchange – a forum for verbal and acoustic exchange at a global level, a worldwide community of listeners"*. This lecture will explore this constellation of ideas. * Max Neuhaus, « Audium. Projekt für eine Welt als Hör-Raum », in Edith Becker et Peter Weibel, ed. Vom Verschwinden der Ferne. Telekommunikation und Kunst, Köln, DuMont, 1990 Anne Zeitz is currently working on her PhD within the research group Esthétiques des Nouveaux Médias at the University of Paris 8. She organized the exhibition and film program Mouvement-observation-contrôle at the Goethe-Institut in 2007 and wrote a Master's thesis entitled, Le point aveugle de la surveillance. Her research is focused on the mechanics of observation and surveillance and the way in which these devices are redeployed in artistic, literary and cinematographic productions since the 1960s. Her current focus is on artists who devise "counter-observations" in regards to state surveillance and the behavior produced by this reversal in the observational relation.