The MIT Press, ISBN: 978-0262018708, English, 232 pages, 2013, USA

“Contentlessness” is more than a brave radical gesture of the past. Even if extensively articulated by Cage, Rauschenberg, Paik and many others, the act of playing with a medium without, or with too little, content has waned until recent times. Right now, however, silence in experimental music seems to be de rigueur (as Neural music editor Cianciotta says: “John Cage rules nowadays”) and in the artists’ POD book scene Lorusso has already documented a modern ‘tradition’ of blank books. No Medium “looks at works that are blank, erased, clear, or silent” aiming not to compile a detailed catalogue, but to gain “a new understanding of media.” An extensive collection of works through various media (film, sound, print, painting, etc.) including a number of obscure ones can be tracked through the text. Dworkin has successfully constructed an informative discourse about the relationship between the emptiness of content and the qualities of the respective medium. These qualities are analysed in depth with a specific approach for each medium, which are never considered in isolation but as a part of a “plurality of media.” The author’s prose is frequently fascinating, revealing the cultural relevance of apparently minimal gestures. The work comes to a satisfying end and the final paradox lies in the outstanding quantity of interesting analysis that Dworkin has been able to construct from “contentlessness”.