[silence] (OT) BBC Radio - The CIA and the Avant Garde

[John Whiting]

A fascinating program! As someone who did sound projection and occasionally lectured 
there for a dozen years, I found it informative and evocative but not surprising, 
even though I knew nothing of the CIA's fine Italian hand in its early history. It 
ties in neatly of course with their support of the English literary magazine 
Encounter (which collapsed when its cover was blown) and also the unlikely elevation 
from obscurity to notoriety of the intransigent artist Jackson Pollack. The reason 
for their support of the avant-garde (at least at the higher, less intellectual 
levels of authority) appears to have been simply the fact that both Hitler and Stalin 
had opposed it.

In retrospect, it's nothing to get worked up about. If the source of artists' support 
were to invalidate their aesthetic, we would have to scrap every bit of Renaissance 
art financed by the Borgias. I like the Salvation Army's attitude towards tainted 
money: "The Lord sent it even if the devil did bring it."

There was a fascinating BBC TV documentary about the CIA's involvement in the support 
of B.F. Skinner and behaviorist psychology, which was regarded as both an antidote to 
and an elaboration of what was believed to be an insidious Soviet brainwashing 
technique. It's the murky world of "The Manchurian Candidate".

John Whiting

STRANGE FRUIT  The oil was from Marjeyoun, in the ancient olive growing region of 
southern Lebanon; the wine, from the legendary Chateau Musar east of Beirut. Olives 
and grapes, the fruits of peace and conviviality, paradoxically exported from a 
war-ravaged country. http://www.whitings-writings.com/diatribes/strange_fruit.htm



Matt Rogalsky wrote:
> just remove the extra parenthesis from that URL and it works:
> 
> www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/musicfeature/pip/etlar/
> 
> best,
> matt
> 
> p.s. CageFest Vancouver Oct 18-21
> www.newmusic.org/silence_schedule.swf
> 
> 
> On 27 Sep 2006, at 10:30, John Whiting wrote:
> 
> 
>>The link doesn't work and neither the program nor its participanys 
>>show up on a BBC
>>search. Can you tell us anything more?
>>
>>John Whiting
> 
> 
> 
> 
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