Éliane Radigue, black and white photograph.
"Radigue pursued an exciting musical life, moving from electroacoustic feedback to electronic music (with the help of her inseparable ARP 2500) and finally reinventing herself through fruitful collaborations with numerous instrumentalists.”
R.I.P. Éliane Radigue
buff.ly/ShlQoU5
The paper I published in @areajournal.bsky.social last year has very kindly been 'highly commended' by @culturalgeogaus.bsky.social as part of their annual paper prize for early career researchers. Do consider following the study group if you are a cultural geographer in Australia!
Spinoza's Geographical Ethics - out now, open access in e-book form: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-spinoza... @edinburghup.bsky.social
Worth reading alongside Claire Wilmot’s new piece, ‘Fascistic Dream Machines’, on the far right’s use of AI video:
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...
Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by George Burdon (2025) entitled 'Displaced attention: Bergson, attentive habits and Tony Conrad's drone music' with a black banner at the top. Attention has emerged as an important issue in the social sciences and humanities in recent years. Much influential work characterises our era as one in which our attention is increasingly placed under stress, seeking to unpack the consequences of such a state of affairs for our capacities to think. This paper turns to the work of Henri Bergson to offer a distinctly geographic perspective on such debates by emphasising the intimate links between attention and the material environments of everyday life. Thinking through Bergson, the paper suggests that some environments enrol a greater degree of our attention in routine actions, leaving us more in thrall to the repetitive sensory and cognitive solicitations of each present moment, while others are more amenable to a displacement of attention away from such demands, prising open time and space for creative thought and action. As a way of exploring the latter, the paper explores the potential of music—specifically, the drone music of Tony Conrad—to create environments of displaced attentiveness. Through the use of single tones sustained over long durations, often at high volumes, Conrad's performances aimed to create a space in which an audience's everyday habits of attention were suspended. Approaching Conrad's music through Bergson suggests that what emerges in the displacement of attention through drone music is a feeling for the powers of time that the teeming activity of each present moment requires we habitually ignore.
#OpenAccess in Area:
'Displaced attention: Bergson, attentive habits and Tony Conrad's drone music' by @georgeburdon.bsky.social
This paper explores the intimate links between attention and the different material environments of everyday life.
doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky
Just published:
Thinking about the relations between attention and environment by way of Henri Bergson and drone music.
Open access in @areajournal.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1111/area...
New paper from me - a Geography Compass piece on sound art geographies:
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
A few days left to contribute to our proposed session on the geographies of attention at this year's RGS-IBG conference in Birmingham. Cfp and details of where to send an abstract below. Deadline Friday!
@rgsibg.bsky.social
