The University of the Underground releases a series of unique records made on X-ray films featuring unreleased songs and audio from artists and thinkers, Massive Attack, Jónsi of Sigur Rós, Alex Somers, Pussy Riot, Noam Chomsky, Nástio Mosquito, Cyborg Neil Harbisson, and Lord Mayor of Sheffield Magid Magid. Together with this influential group of artists and thinkers, the project, titled “The Library of Dangerous Thoughts” is a project by The University of the Underground Unconventional Research Office with X-Rays records produced by the Bureau of Lost Culture and a digital platform built by digital museum Collecteurs, to raise awareness against censorship and encourage plurality of thinking.

You can bid on an X-ray record here!

These previously unreleased tracks and ‘dangerous thoughts’ engraved on x-ray films are unique vinyl-type records made with audio cut onto radiography film. X-ray records were made as an act of defiance against censorship in cold war era Soviet Union, where they were used as an underground method of distributing prohibited music by Western, emigre and banned Russian musicians. This unforgettable cultural response to state censorship is now presented as a contemporary reminder of the not-so-distant past and collected in the “Library of Dangerous Thoughts” supporting freedom of thinking and countercultures.

This initiative is a call to inspire citizens of the world into creating further pluralistic platforms and to support free education.

As a part of the release, a limited number of these collectable x-ray records cut by the Bureau of Lost Culture on an original 1957 recording lathe will be available for sale and on auction on Collecteurs, the world’s first digital museum with a mission to create access to millions of unseen artworks in storage facilities. Soundbites from the unreleased tracks and a special editorial report on censorship will also be presented along with the x-ray records. All proceeds from the sale will benefit the University of the Underground, a charity offering free and transnational education for the next generation of creatives. The University of the Underground aims to maintain, support and cultivate countercultures that will reactivate the public’s engagement with democratic institutions, politics and their plausible futures.