What’s the Frequency, Eran?

Eran Schaerf currently has an exhibition at Établissement d’en face in Brussels, and the opening of this show was also the launch of his new publication, which sums up of his FM Scenario – The Listener’s Voice series of exhibitions and radio programmes (2012-15), of which the Brussels exhibition is another iteration. “Sums up” is actually the wrong term, for while the publication is indeed a summa of sorts, it does not merely represent the exhibitions; rather, it reenacts them on the page, reshuffling the elements whose intricate interrelations and interactions make up FM Scenario.

In fact, the book does this not once, but twice—by coming in markedly different English and German editions, each with a specific design and a different (re)formatting of texts and images. Frequency-Modulated Scenario is published by Archive Books, and Frequenz-moduliertes Szenario by Intermedium/Belleville. I contributed an essay titled “Images Losing the Plot”; other contributors include Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Eva Meyer, Gerald Raunig and Margit Rosen. Should the name Eran Schaerf not ring any bells for you, or only the faintest of bells, this should be all the more reason to check out at least one version of this publication.