ANDREY MONASTYRSKI

THE MUSIC OF CONSENT

(1986)

"The Music of Consent" is a reusable audio-action for two people, the author and one listener. A black box (see photo) is placed onto a table. This box contains a transistor radio of the brand "Alpinist." The tightly sealed box has a cut-out slot in its side, through which the author turns on the radio receiver, which is tuned to the 4th (musical) station of Moscow radio. At the same time, a speaker system plays the 30-minute sound-track, "The Music of Consent."

The sound-track consists of a speech improvisation produced in two takes. First, a continuous 30-minute text was recorded. Then, it was overlaid with another – intermittent – recording of another similarly improvisational text. In other words, pieces of the first text remained audible only in the discontinuities of the second text with which it was overlaid. Both texts were recorded against the background of music from the black box.

In this way, the author and the participant of "The Music of Consent" listen simultaneously to both the sound-track and the fragment of the radio program that plays from the black box at the time of the action.

After the sound-track’s final words ("...the end of the music of consent"), the author turns off the transistor radio, and for some time afterward, the speaker system continues to play the music at the end of the sound-track (this is a random piece of music by A. Schnittke against which the second, "erasing" layer of text was recorded).

 

February (etc.) 1986