PERFORMANCE BRAIN STORM

Musing lots on how to put together a presentation of this project- a textual delight, a space for 1 to share with (2) as many ears as possible- how to share what I've got to say about the last little while...?
I have had such fun, and met some really top people, made good friends and played played PLAYED- with a series of contributions, and a rich vane of theories.
I went to member meetings and shared ideas, the AGM and counted ballots, to hear a contribution at Sound/Site 2010 festival, To Cut and Splice festival in London to hear performances. I made cakes and I became a subscriber to Wire. I participated in 3 workshops, a movie screening of Radio Colifata, and the ensuing discussion, and subsequent meets, of the World Mental Health Day Unsane Rhapsody project. I made car stickers to jazz up you car, and celebrated the new studio at the Fete Worse Than Death, and winterly festivities at the Late Night Shops and Jingle Hells. I spent mornings over books with coffee, afternoons at the studio, and evenings in the kitchen listening to radio. I sent emails OUT and c-o-l-a-b-o-r-a-t-e-d- and chatted and drank tea and enjoyed Dartington's leaves in full turn and laughed and was quiet and cycled in almost all weathers. I made 40+ hours recordings and was part of the production behind 180 hours of live broadcast, and I managed to play with my daughter too.
I learnt lots about my own processes, had a wonderful time exploring radio...

cep prez

write, right, gotta script a performance presentation- some kind of make-sense of all this- problem is where to start?
Investigating context- tying all the elements of this together, multi layered, looping histories and contingencies shouldn't be too difficult, in the form of multi-layered performance lecture yes....?

a broadcast element- direct from Soundart Radio 102.5 FM
a live element, me, in a Falmouth studio-
complimentary arguing, overlaid expositions, examples of work, interactive feedback - 30 minutes of  ALL THIS....  
But where to start? The context of the specific station is tied directly to individuals  involved(initiators and participators), who are tied to 'community radio' (Ofcom definitions), which is tied to the rural landscape (Totnes town, Devonian practicalities), which is tied to avantgarde arts college (imagination and experiment), which is tied to legalities of the country (British Laws), which is tied to the world at large (global market place/human kind), which is tied to the idea of liberty (human rights), which is tied to expression (transmission), which is tied to art (reception), which is tied to the law (history of radio in rebellion), which is tied to mechanics (limits and uses), which is tied to commerciality (conformity and control), which is tied to resistance (small acts great acts), which is tied to interactions ( languages), which is tied to education (critical thinking), which is tied to media (communications and platforms), which is tied to participation (rights and responsibilities), which is tied to individuals and on and on and on....   and , this all happens to be 'my' experience, so some how i have to involve my own participation, without BORING MYSLEF... ahhhh Joan Retallack, do you know how happy the tiers of 'being' you share make me? Most likely, you doooooooo  n't

late night shopping

I am making record bowls out of charity shop reject vinyl, (hello Andy Williams) to sell at the Soundart Radio cafe on Christmas late night shopping festival...  We have the daycentre lounge and kitchen at Birdwood House beside the Civic square, and will be selling 2 types of mulled lovliness, spreading the word and providing info about the station and studio, and  using it as a warm base for volunteers who will be recording the festival for broadcast. Its going to be fun- The late night shopping is a annual Totnes winter festival- there are crafts stalls and delicious festive food, street performers ( Mamma Tolkus on the Plains and Burt Miller and the Animal Folk above the Animals in distress Charity shop- ace) and decorations, the high street is closed off to cars and most of the town pile out to get their wreaths, misteltoe, gifts and whatnot and enjoy the spectacle. 

The winter holidays play list is open for contributions- its the 'Jingle Hell'- a alternative alternative to the usual   festive fayre... I made a sound scape from my recordings of this night- listen to it through my Soundcloud link....

questionaire survey networking

 
I've  composed a survey to gather thoughts ideas and personal experience, a email to the membership, and also further afield, through the Internet to artists and friends and other interested parties . . .
there is a cap on the number of questions - ten questions sounds ample, but it is hard to chose what to leave out. Currently I am loving community (small/arts) radio and pretty over excited about its possibilities (radio is exciting! but maybe i should stop jumping on the furniture) - and it will be interesting to see how others relate to and use it- the verity of work suggests just as many different approaches.
- it is hard to compose questions that carry my interests in a accessible form- i would like the juice of the radio/producer/listener relationship, ...  :-) Maybe other peoples' opinions will validate my enquiry?-  it makes good sense to invite the 'community' on the to share ideas on broadcasting and community generally.So far it runs like this:

HERE IT IS : http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/S9FWZQH

and I will answer it too- as I guess in the questions asked are the answers I'm after myself....

done it did it good

i recorded and broadcast the TTC meeting. felt good. sounded fine. flumped the out-tro-   felt a bit put out that i sounded shoddy(i couldn't locate the text out my the three bits of paper, froze, couldn't find the track I'd lined up to play doh er baaaa arg blurt...   Nell reassured me afterwards, " The longer you broadcast, the more experience you have presenting, the less you are bothered about those moments." good- a sense of professionalness is not in any way connected to a professional sounding show :-)

Dan Lander writing in 'Radio Castings: Musings on Radio and Art', in Radio Rethink, states that

"Literacy is a two way street in which reading (as in listening) and writing (as in producing) play equal roles in the development of expression and comprehension."

 Expression and comprehension...   yes please, in all ways, small ways, for us, on the street :-)

radio gaga radio googoo

The Totnes town council have requested that we hold off giving the local library copies of the recording until we have dealt with issues of

will the public be free to borrow these CD's?
there is a concern about the copyright

A local paper ran an article in which a councillor expressed worries that Soundart Radio would produce and sell CDs (good, lord, at a loss as who would want them?!?!?) and there seems to be a issue with the idea of there being a 'publicly available record', which is what the minutes should be anyway, and personal accountability, which is interesting form the point of public meetings and public speaking....so more meetings there for the sake of protocol.... and just to make sure we all agree on common sense :-)

Copyright, plagiarism and creative commons are all part of my investigation. the vulnerability i feel when publishing this blog can be seen as a result of this- I say I value transparency, but fear misrepresentation, I yearn for expression, but fret about being judged....  I have adjusted the settings to this blog so that it does not appear on search engines, (at one point, if you entered,"art is not a mirror its a fucking hammer" on google, i was the top 10 of the hit list ;-) and added a 'adult content' disclaimer before any readers could view it- these steps gave me a little more confidence. I saw that one reason i am attracted to radio is the (optional) unaccountability of producers- listeners do not need to know a producers' name, whereabouts, qualifications, family history etc and cannot interrupt or shout down the work- though of course if it is not to their liking, they are fully able to turn off or tune out. Broadcasting in Totnes has been very challenging- it has made me more aware of my ties to propriety, responsibility, my own ideologies, and how i wish to work- in what capacities, in what mode and where- . And for whom- I do not doubt that my work (audio outreach specifically) is not to every ones taste- but hope that it is enjoyed somewhere.
This is interesting to me - it seems the other side of individual arts practices is community activity- they are kind of indivisible- there is a responsibility for arts to be public, and to engage on a street level as well as a theoretical or conceptual level... if you wish to produce work 'for everyone' work that is public, approachable, open, anti-exclusive, is there a cut off point which art/radio should not pass, or should a producer honour there muse and make work that is not necessarily for everyones' taste??  what is the responsibility of the listener in this equation? ie,"I just listened to the whole of Kenny Rodgers' back catalogue and now feel sick, depressed and like committing a violence upon my teddy bear." Maybe you should have turned off when you first became discomforted? Kenny can't be blamed- he is just doing his thing, and as Bob says- "you can't please all the people all the time".
Outside of the academic environment criticism is often given unconstructively -squinteyes across a full room/a sneer/ a flippant comment made to insult - thrown to disarm, to hurt, but there lies my own chance to choose how to process it- maybe what challenges has the greatest worth. I am not given to agitation, but not prepared to shut up either.    :-)

      

REPRESENTATIONS, KAPPELER, PROCESSES

i have been on a very nice icy visit to Falmouth- the new home of my course. the main uni building is occupied with protesting students collecting signatures for a petition against the cuts- i have signed and made friends, but spent most of my time in the library, on the beach, in a boat and in a cottage eating chocolate and drinking wine celebrating new known writers with good friends...  Do you know Susanne Kappeler? 'The pornography of Respresention' is a very exciting book ranging over territory in a manner i am not used to- her argument for developing dialogue in community as a starting point for social remedy in quite persuasive. she is particularly passionate about the use of relationship between real people- and breaking the hold of mass media grip on social expression- the effect of transmitter -receiver when the transmitter is a representation of corporate or political agenda (radio voice, authorized personality) apposed to the real time conversation or open dialogic experience where equality is at least aspired for-(Brechts' radio as an Apparatus of Communication) of  the access to the media, a voice, a chance to respond, to be heard as well as to listen is more or less a fringes activity? 
In the chapter 'Communication', Kappeler writes in protest against medias' appropriation of art-
‘conciousness industry’  is a term coined by H. M. Enzenburger in 1970 to point up the ideological role of cultural industries such as the mass media.
All the students currently attending arts college, might suggest a more open, critical approach to media/art/the world as represented/our own place with that -photographers, creative writers, a masse of educated technology savvy creators- but Kappeler suggests the reference point of much artistic endeavor is caught in a subjectivity that is a reflection of bourgeoisie  ideology and dross society- contextual- and is without the self awareness required to break with its subjection to such allusive controls as sexism, racism and consumerism (the status quo is held by  the proliferation of stereotype reassurances).
Kappeler writes about the need to view works of art as a whole communicative process, suggesting art and 'communication' is isolated in an ascetic sanctuary; but should be seen to belong to a communicative context which is reality rather than fantasy.
"Representation means the reification of the message. The medium and message are foregrounded, at the expense of the communicators. Representation foregrounds content- the representation 'of'- and obscures the agent of representation." - which so often, is corporate or politically aligned(the warm advertisement voice extolling a product, the 'Dear' in a Bill from your electricity supplier, the use of friendly motifs, stolen from interpersonal communications and reworked to carry messages are rhetorical devices of persuasion rather than relationships of equals).
These ideas can be applied to models of radio- the difference between a refined and official station and a station which keeps it's door open and welcomes interesting occurrences not as news material but as a ground for a interactive reality.


Lucinda, a founding artist of the station was speaking about her fascination with looping today- not only in the studio as a sonic material, but looping within the community- a show might make ripples that feed back as response, whether in the moment as the first broadcast, or over weeks and years and decades with the people effected by what they heard. Radio can be used as a closed circuit- or as a situation of dialogue- between people.
As Lucinda also said, and says on her loop laden Soundart Radio show 'Swimming in the Stream', "if you think you can make radio come on up to Soundart Radio studio and have a go!" ( but in a nice way- this is a invitation to make radio, not a authoritative challenge).

is this the end? Awen asks, frost snow rain

december is here