Thom Yorke sends fans to Lausanne's Collection de l'Art Brut

Thom Yorke posted on Dead Air Space, the band's blog, from Lausanne in Switzerland on 14 August, the day before Radiohead play the Roman amphitheatre at Avenches. The city, he told readers, holds the best collection of outsider art in the world, and he linked to the Collection de l'Art Brut, a museum of work made by people outside the art world that has been open since 1976.

when i was at art college this collection was a big influence on me. now finally i have seen it.

Thom Yorke¹

The college was the University of Exeter, where he studied English and art from 1988. i found myself close to tears. and that never happens in galleries.. normally i am falling asleep¹, he writes. Anyone who is ever in Lausanne should try it, he says, because it will change them.

The same day he posted four lines under the title “as i go to sleep in lausanne”, without a word of his own. They begin “Form is emptiness; emptiness is form”, the best-known lines of the Heart Sutra, a short Buddhist text and one of the most recited in the Mahayana tradition.