Library Person
John Duncan
American noise and performance artist, closely associated with LAFMS since the late 1970s.
Born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1953, John Duncan studied under Allan Kaprow at CalArts before becoming closely associated with the Los Angeles Free Music Society from 1978, working alongside Tom Recchion, Fredrik Nilsen, and Joe Potts. His performance and installation work — including Scare (1976), Blind Date (1980), and The Keening Towers — uses shortwave radio, field recordings, and confrontational staging to work directly on an audience’s perception and nervous system rather than presenting sound as music to be listened to at a remove. Duncan later became a formative link between American and Japanese noise scenes, releasing The Black Album with Merzbow and collaborating with Keiji Haino, Cosey Fanni Tutti, and Chris Carter. He has lived in Bologna, Italy, since the 1990s.