{"product_id":"no-medium-isbn-9780262527552","title":"No Medium","description":"\u003cb\u003eClose readings of ostensibly “blank” works—from unprinted pages to silent music—that point to a new understanding of media.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eNo Medium\u003c\/i\u003e, Craig Dworkin looks at works that are blank, erased, clear, or silent, writing critically and substantively about works for which there would seem to be not only nothing to see but nothing to say. Examined closely, these ostensibly contentless works of art, literature, and music point to a new understanding of media and the limits of the artistic object.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDworkin considers works predicated on blank sheets of paper, from a fictional collection of poems in Jean Cocteau's \u003ci\u003eOrphée\u003c\/i\u003e to the actual publication of a ream of typing paper as a book of poetry; he compares Robert Rauschenberg's \u003ci\u003eErased De Kooning Drawin\u003c\/i\u003eg to the artist Nick Thurston's erased copy of Maurice Blanchot's \u003ci\u003eThe Space of Literature\u003c\/i\u003e (in which only Thurston's marginalia were visible); and he scrutinizes the sexual politics of photographic representation and the implications of obscured or obliterated subjects of photographs. Reexamining the famous case of John Cage's \u003ci\u003e4'33”\u003c\/i\u003e, Dworkin links Cage's composition to Rauschenberg's \u003ci\u003eWhite Paintings\u003c\/i\u003e, Ken Friedman's \u003ci\u003eZen for Record\u003c\/i\u003e (and Nam June Paik's \u003ci\u003eZen for Film\u003c\/i\u003e), and other works, offering also a “guide to further listening” that surveys more than 100 scores and recordings of “silent” music.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDworkin argues that we should understand media not as blank, base things but as social events, and that there is no medium, understood in isolation, but only and always a plurality of media: interpretive activities taking place in socially inscribed space.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eNo Medium\u003c\/i\u003e is not only an admirable feat of painstaking research that puts into conversation an impressive range of artworks, both famous and obscure, but also a testament to the fact that for the industrious critic encountering an apparent absence there is always something interesting to say.—\u003cb\u003eMichael Leong\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHyperallergic\u003c\/i\u003e—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eDworkin's study of apparent anomalies that turn out to be representative exemplars rather than quirky curiosities is well worth attention.\u003c\/p\u003e—\u003cb\u003eJohanna Drucker\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e—Craig Dworkin, Professor in the English Department at the University of Utah, is the author of \u003ci\u003eReading the Illegible\u003c\/i\u003e and the editor of \u003ci\u003eLanguage to Cover a Page: The Early Writings of Vito Acconci\u003c\/i\u003e (MIT Press).","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303874285797,"sku":"NP9780262527552","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262527552.jpg?v=1767733806","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/no-medium-isbn-9780262527552","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}