Avant into Pop, Pop into Avant. Interplays between Music and Visual Media

This introductory essay theoretically addresses the ongoing exchanges between avant-garde and popular forms in the visual media while interacting with music, as viewed from trans-historical and intermedial perspectives. For instance, it is discussed the work of John Cage, Yoko Ono, Velvet Underground, Brian Eno, and David Byrne, as well as Dada and Fluxus. This special issue of Cinéma & Cie aims at pushing the discussion on the “avant-pop connection” further by embracing a wider angle of observation The call for transhistorical and intermedial investigations aims precisely at re-framing the general topic as a matter of contamination and continuities between apparently distinct moments and “sectors” of cultural history.