Dissonant Waves : Ernst Schoen and Experimental Sound in the 20th century – Sam Dolbear & Esther Leslie

Hardback

248 pages

Goldsmith's Press

ISBN: 9781913380564

Dissonant Waves tracks the life of Ernst Schoen—poet, composer, radio programmer, theorist, and best friend of Walter Benjamin from childhood—as he moves between Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, and London. It casts radio history and practice into concrete spaces, into networks of friends and institutions, into political exigencies and domestic plights, and into broader aesthetic discussions of the politicization of art and the aestheticization of politics. Through friendship and comradeship, a position in state-backed radio, imprisonment, exile, networking in a new country, re-emigration, ill-treatment, neglect, Schoen suffers the century and articulates its broken promises.

An exploration of the ripples of radio waves, the circuits of experimentation and friendship, and the proposals that half-found a route into the world—and might yet spark political-technical experimentation.