Intuitive Music

John Duncan

Born in 1953 in Wichita (USA), John Duncan is one of the most notorious sound experimenters in the U.S. recognized for his work in performance, music, and installations based on emotional responses to sensory deprivation and stimuli.

John Duncan is also one of the most provocative, controversial, and radical artists and musicians since the times of the COUM Collective in London. In 1980, he set a project called “Blind Date” in which he purchased a female corpse in Tijuana to have sex with and video tape it. After the disgusting experience, Duncan had a vasectomy and got taken pictures of the operation. As he explained, he wanted “to make sure that the last potent seed I had was spent in a cadaver”. Duncan’s original purpose was, on his own words “to show what can happen to men that are trained to ignore their emotions.” The social and political refusal to Duncan’s project had as a consequence his self-exile from the U.S. and has had long term sequels throughout his career. In 2002, he was invited to Stockholm by the Swedish art institution IASPIS to residence for six months after the important influence of his work on a generation of artists, designers and architects, and it was turned down in the last moment when IASPIS knew about the “Blind Date” project.

John Duncan’s audio project along with Francisco López received a 1999 Prix Ars Electronica award for digital music. Duncan has also released works in which he reads text backwards and re-plays it forward to achieve new and interesting effects. During the 90’s, he released numerous works in the fields of contemporary composition, post industrial, and noise music.

John Duncan has also worked with artists such as Max Springer, Bernhard Günter, and Ralf Wehowsky.