WHN-1050 IS A PUT-ON.
EVERYBODY PUT ON WHN RADIO
(OR ELSE!)
SUBWAY AD

We don't read a newspaper: we step into it the way we step into a warm bath. It surrounds us. It environs us in information.

We wear our media. They are our real clothes.

Radio & TV bombard us with images, cover us tattoo-style: they clothe us in information, program us. At which point, nudity ceases to have meaning. Asked if she had anything on when posing for nude calendar shots, Marilyn Monroe replied, "The radio."

We come to know a thing by being inside it. We get an inside view. We step into the belly of the beast and that, precisely, is what the masked & costumed dancer does. He puts on the beast.

Traditionally in New Guinea, dancers in floral skirts & feather headdresses put on the jungle, wrapping themselves in their environment. They became one with the plants & animals.

Now they wrap themselves in information. Radio reclothes them.

We assume the role of our costume, our information. The public figure's image, detached from his body by electricity, is transferred to ours. His spirit enters us, possesses us, displacing our private spirit. We wear his image, play his role, assume his identity. When Eisenhower suffered a heart attack, the stock market fell. On Moratorium Day in Washington, April 1971, tens of thousands of marchers, clothed in collective guilt, wore Lieutenant Calley masks.

In the preliterate world, spirit possession is thought to occur rarely, under circumstances fraught with mystery & danger. With us, it occurs daily, without wonder, free from examination.