Audio Arts: Volume 2 No 4

00:00:02 Interview with Marcel Duchamp by George Heard Hamilton in New York and Richard Hamilton. This recording, made in 1959, of an interview with Marcel Duchamp by George Heard Hamilton in New York and Richard Hamilton in London, is a unique and rare opportunity to listen to the artist himself talk and answer questions about his work, motivation as an artist and views in retrospect on the Large Glass, 'Readymades' and subsequent philosophies built up around him. The following topics are amongst those discussed: Readymades, bicycle wheel, bottle dryer, snow shovel, phial of Paris air, origins of Dada, large glass, Courbet, reactions against retinal conception of painting, Muybridge, Futurists, Balla, and so on. The immediate impact of this tape is the ease with which Duchamp articulates often complex issues surrounding his work with immense clarity and simplicity.

00:00:02 Interview with Marcel Duchamp by George Heard Hamilton in New York and Richard Hamilton. 00:07:15 Recording of a conversation with Hermann Nitsch made during lunch at the Basle Art fair in June 1975. During 1964 Hermann Nitsch, with fellow artists Otto Muhl and Gunther Brus, founded in Austria the Vienna Institute for Direct Art. From 1965, the group organised a series of events concerned with drawing attention to violent and suppressed tendencies within the human mind. Controversy and social irritation built up around the artists and their activities which were seen as bizarre rituals, with slaughtered animals used in performances, blood and flesh being smeared over participants. In this recording, made during a lunch at the Basleart fair in June 1975, Nitsch talks generally about his work, its sources and influences on his thinking including Jung, Eastern philosophy and Nietzsche.