The Sound of Free Speech (Extended Version)

In 1978, the British punk band Crass released their first EP, The Feeding of The Five Thousand. During its production in a factory, the workers refused to press the record because they disagreed with the « blasphemous » character of the first track « Asylum » which violently attacks religion. The band replaced this track with a one-minute piece of silence called « The Sound of Free Speech ».

The Sound of Free Speech (Extended Version) gives us the opportunity to hear this silent track, extended in such a way that its duration corresponds to that of the Silence! symposium, organized over two days, April 23 and 24, 2015, by the Art History & Communication Studies department of McGill University, in Montreal, Canada. The recording of this extended silence is played in parallel with the papers for the duration of the colloquium.