Axis Axis is pleased to present the release of Radio Meditation by Jasper Marsalis, marking the beginning of a series of co-publications with the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation. Curated with Vittoria de Franchis, they exist as editorial experiments centred on sound, language, and documentation of performances or works by artists who have been exhibited in the Foundation’s spaces.
Radio Meditation is an autonomous system for ever-evolving sonic meditation inspired by Pauline Oliveros’ Tuning Meditation (a collective exercise where participants tune and detune vocal tones in response to others) and Luigi Russolo’s pioneering noise instruments, the piece sonorises a returning conversation in between a radio, tuned on BBC Radio 3, and a microcomputer. The latter, capturing spectral photographs of the radio’s output at random intervals, crossfades them in oscillations, generating a mutating soundscape of orchestrated chance, an ‘improvised chord of 2048 voices’. Tuning, such as “in tune” or “out of tune”, suggests a relation to consensus, but because Radio Meditation is constantly changing that consensus is in flux.
Radio Meditation was presented as a sound installation within the cyclical sonic programme of the exhibition Ellipse and Ellipsis, curated by Vittoria de Franchis at Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, London in 2025.
The release consists of an excerpt from Radio Meditation recorded during the opening night of the exhibition and includes a special edition of 33 copies, each including an individual photograph by Jasper Marsalis.
Jasper Marsalis (b. 1995 in Los Angeles, US) lives and works in London, UK. Working across painting, sculpture, music and text, Jasper Marsalis elaborates a parallel between the space of the artwork and a performer on stage, both of which entail an experience of being consumed by audiences. Glaring spotlights are depicted throughout his work, obscuring their intended objects and acting as obstacles to vision. The tension of impermeability is mirrored in the sculptures whose surface fractures seem to chisel at opacity. By troubling perception, Marsalis interrogates the ocular centrism of visual art and the associated role of spectacle and access.
Standard edition of 300 copies, 12" vinyl, 140 gram. Edited by Achille Filipponi and Vittoria de Franchis.
