the night air

As inveterate collagists, we at The Night Air are big fans of a podcast called Some Assembly Required. If you have a taste for cut’n'pastry we commend to you the weekly selection cooked up by master media chef Jon Nelson. Here’s what he says about it.

Hosted by Jon Nelson, since January of 1999, Some Assembly Required features work by a variety of artists and groups who work with bits and pieces of their media environments, giving something back to the cultural landscape from which they so enthusiastically appropriate.

The genre is young, despite examples dating as far back as 1961, when James Tenney constructed a tape collage borrowing heavily from cut-up fragments of a recording by Elvis Presley. Both provocative and surreal, this style continues to evolve and to challenge.

Since its inception in 1999, Nelson has produced over two dozen artist features, interviewing everyone from John Oswald and The Evolution Control Committee, to Christian Marclay and DJ Spooky - providing a variety of unique perspectives on the nature of this daring and creative style of expression. For a complete list of artists interviewed on Some Assembly Required (many of which are now available to download), click HERE.

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