Gregory Whitehead | |
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| Years active | 1980 - present |
| Notable work | Pressures of the Unspeakable, Shake, Rattle, Roll, The Loneliest Road, On The Shore Dimly Seen |
| Awards | Prix Italia, Frix Futura, Sony Gold Academy |
| Website | https://gregorywhitehead.net |
Gregory Whitehead[1] is an American radiomaker, audio artist, text-sound poet, playwright and media philosopher based inLenox, Massachusetts. He has created radio artworks, plays, and experimental features for theBBC,Radio France, Deutschland Radio, Australia's ABC, andNPR[2] and other broadcasters.
Gregory Whitehead began experimenting with audiotape while an undergraduate atHaverford College, using two cassette recorders to improvise, record, and mix voices with instruments, including his own saxophones.[3] He later earned an MA in Media Studies at theNew School for Social Research, which at that time placed a strong emphasis on creative radio. Whitehead's thesis examinedWalter Ong’s ideas on electronic orality and phenomenological presence as expressed through the voice. During this period, he also developed an interest in the films and philosophies ofAlexander Kluge andChris Marker, focusing on the relationship between documentary evidence and imaginative counterpoint. At the same time, he created experimental voice performances and text-sound poetry in dialogue withCharles Amirkhanian and other artists.
In 1987, Whitehead collaborated withHelen Thorington and Regine Beyer on the creation of a three-dayFestival for a New Radio broadcast onWKCR FM in New York City. The three also contributed to the founding ofNew American Radio, a nationally distributed series presenting radio works across a wide range of genres.
During the 1990s, Whitehead initiated two research projects: the Laboratory for Innovation and Acoustic Research (LIAR)[4][5] and the International Institute for Screamscape Studies,[6] which included a large scream archive and thePrix Italia–awarded radio broadcast,Pressures of the Unspeakable. He also worked on semi-improvisatory collaborations withChristof Migone (The Thing About Bugs) and Richard Busch (Nothing But Fog). In the same period he also contributed toAll Things Considered andThis American Life. At the turn of the 2000s, Whitehead serves as an advisor forWGXC, a local station with a mission to explore experimental radio. Beginning in 1998, he produced programs forBBC Radio 4, exploring imaginative and experimental audio forms. Up to 2012, he continued to produce radio plays and documentaries forBBC Radio 3 and4.
Gregory Whitehead continues to produce a diverse body of radio art and experimental text-sound works, working independently for a variety of stations and initiatives internationally. His media repertoire spans both analog and digital formats, including cassette tapes, CDs, radio broadcasts, and music festivals. Whitehead's work has been included in exhibitions at theWellcome Collection, theWhitney Museum,Documenta,Mass MOCA, and other institutions. His radio works have also been featured at conferences and festivals, including Radiophrenia,[7]Third Coast International Audio Festival, Radio Revolten.[8] He maintains an ongoing collaboration with Wave Farm,[9] where he frequently appears on air in interviews and discussions and serves as a mentor in their artist residency program.
In the mid-1980s, Whitehead collaborated with choreographer Karen Bamonte and percussionist Toshi Makihara on the development ofText/Flesh performances, in which texts, rhythms, and bodies intersected, producing narratives such asThe Confusion of Tongues andThe Assassination. He later worked withZaven Paré, Mark Sussman, and Allen S. Weiss onTheater of the Ears, based on a text by Valère Novarina, which was performed atLa MaMa inNew York City. In 2004, he collaborated again with Sussman and Weiss onDanse Macabre,[10] a work featuring the dolls and voice of Michel Nedjar.
Since 2021, Gregory Whitehead has collaborated withFinnish filmmaker Arttu Nieminen,[11] creating experimental short films. In 2021, they createdAwareness,[12] an experimental short film combining Whitehead's mantra-like poetry with abstract symmetry and rapid cutting to reflect on the human mind, cultural evolution, and the state of the world. In 2023, they collaborated again onLift Up Your Voices.[13] In this film, a voice from the perspective of an all-embracing algorithm addresses humanity in its final moments, punctuated by a song drawn fromEmily Dickinson’s poem. The work features collage-like montage, hypnotic drone sequences, and the interplay between Whitehead’s text and Nieminen’s visual imagery.
The concept ofwoundscape in Gregory Whitehead’s work frames wounds not only as physical injuries but as symbolic expressions. It treats wounds as narratives that require interpretation, each carrying a unique voice and significance. Whitehead explores how wounds, both literal and metaphorical, intersect with technological landscapes and societal narratives, emphasizing their role in evoking emotional and philosophical reflections on human experience and memory. The notion extends beyond individual injuries to encompass a broader metaphorical landscape of trauma and its consequences, suggesting a world shaped by wounds whose effects influence perception, identity, and surrounding reality. Wounds represent fragmented, entropic states of consciousness resulting from trauma. In Whitehead’s work, thewoundscape functions as a thematic and aesthetic motif, reflecting the intersection of personal trauma with wider social and cultural implications, and forming a metaphorical radio space where wounds and their effects are explored and interpreted.[2]
Interference and entropy serve as central points of reference in Gregory Whitehead’s radio art, both aesthetically and structurally, as “embodiments of radio’s inherent qualities”.[14] Whitehead emphasized that “to be aware of entropy and interference is crucial for radio art”.[2] His works demonstrate that these aspects are key to his practice, revealing the poetics of interference and entropy as formative strategies. Entropy appears as a formal approach in which the degradation or transformation of sound and language occurs over time, often through analog editing techniques where repeated manipulations alter original recordings to create new sonic textures and meanings. Interference refers to deliberate disruptions within audio compositions, including abrupt cuts, overlapping voices, and juxtaposed sound elements that generate dissonance and complexity. These techniques function as narrative devices that challenge linear storytelling, as exemplified in works such asBlunt Trauma. Through interference and entropy, Whitehead explores the potential of sound and language, investigating themes of fragmentation and reconstruction. Together, these elements form the foundation of his distinctive approach to radio art, shaping experiments with voice, language, and narrative structures.
Gregory Whitehead explores the materiality of radio, asking: “what is the material radio, what is the ‘on air’ made of?”.[15] He conceives radio works as multi-layered compositions in which temporal, spatial, and vocal elements coexist within a non-linear field filled with interruptions and interferences. Whitehead highlights the paradoxical relationship between sender and receiver, who are both close through voice and shared silence, and distant through technological mediation. His notion of the radiobody reflects both presence and absence: “frontal physicality and truncated absence”,[16]emphasizing voice, sound, and waves alongside the voice’s lack of physical source. In Through the Wild Dark[14] (2024), he describes radio art as shaped by radio space itself, where the sounds “hardly matter” and significance lies in “the play of relationships that brings listeners out of the dark and into the mix”.[14] The listener, the player, and the media system form a triangular relationship, and interferences—audible effects of signal creation, processing, reception, and fading—constitute the primary material of radio art, reflecting its intrinsic entropy, impermanence, instability, and fragility.[16]
Active incassette culture throughout the 1980s, he founded the Minerva cassette label in the mid-1980s. In 1991, RRRecords released a 7” vinyl record titledVicekopf. Whitehead collaborated withChristof Migone on the 1995 radio play,The Thing About Bugs, for New American Radio. Other radioplays from the 1990s includePressures of the Unspeakable (1992),Nothing But Fog (1996) andBewitched, Bothered, Bewildered (1997).
Whitehead has produced plays and documentary essays forBBC Radio:
His works have been the subject of numerous analyses and critical reviews by distinguished artists and scholars, including Allen S. Weiss,[18][19] Götz Naleppa,[20] Sheila Davies,[21] Virginia Madsen[22] who have examined their stylistic, conceptual, and cultural significance.
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