Sonic Faction, 81–99

Chapter

To Release the Unnameable You Just Dim the Lights and Then the Playback Starts

EXCERPT

Edited transcript of a conversation on the impending appearance of Justin Barton and Mark Fisher’s On Vanishing Land as a vinyl and digital download release on the Flatlines Label, London, 25 June, 2018.

Kodwo Eshun: We’re going to talk about the process by which On Vanishing Land went from being a work made by Mark and Justin over a certain period
of time to being installed within The Showroom,1 about working with Mark, who was and is better known as a theorist than as a so-called sound artist, and
Justin, who’s better known as a theorist and novelist2 than as an artist, the transition of On Vanishing Land from a work that was really concerned with playback, and was specific to venues and moving to vinyl and to download so that On Vanishing Land enters into circulation as a digital file that marks the change between 2013 and where we are now in 2018, about Mark and Justin working in sound, whether that was Mark’s mixes or the audio essays with Justin that mediated between theory, sound, and fiction, between sonic fiction and theory-fiction in the space of the exhibition.…