hi!

My practice as a writer has been developing towards audio work, and I have been more and more interested in the medium of radio as a platform for showing my own work, and also in radio’s possible uses as a tool of social empowerment. I am wishing to understand how radio is being used by artists and activists to create spaces that function as community centres, and how radio can be used to facilitate well being for individuals and in localities.
I will need to define what I understand by ‘community’, and also clarify which model of radio I will be studying.

I will be avoiding an ethnographic definition of community, as that is a life times’ work in itself- instead I will work around the ideas and writings of radio and audio artists (Gregory Whitehead, Allen Weiss, Charles Bernstein) and also other writers, artists and activists that offer definitions of community movements that I see Soundart radio as aligning itself alongside (Joan Retallack’s ‘dialogic community’, bell hooks’ ‘communities of resistance’, Felix Guattari’s ‘free radio’ etc.).


Radio for this CEP is a small local public broadcasting venture called Soundart Radio 102.5 FM, which broadcasts under a community license- it is not run for political or commercial gain, it is run by and on behalf of its listening community, and represents both the community of its geographical area, and also radio as a living and historic ‘hot’ media with a international community of listeners, producers, makers and enthusiasts. I will be seeking to understand how Soundart radio fulfils the role of community /ies, and how it serves the desires of said community /ies, and will be reflecting upon and monitoring my own interaction with these ideas as a individual participating, listening and producing, and process this into both audio and writing documentations.

Broadcasting can be considered as a mirror to the way we live, and I am interested in programming and stations that offer alternative and considered options within their scheduling.

Radio art requires a consistent body of research and practice that concentrates on sound at its point of signification, not a literal reading that will collapse into cliché, but a sensitivity to the ways in which meaning in sound circulates, dissipates and re-emerges. The development of an autonomous body of theory and practice regarding aural referentuality- in particular as it relates to radio and electronic media- will contribute to a better understanding of the role that radio art plays in the articulation of social and cultural ideas. (Lander,D. 1994, Radiocastings: musings on radio and art in Radio Rethink



The two community models I will be focusing on are individuals sharing a geographically related relationship within the area of FM reception, and also communities physically distant but still communing /communicating, thorough both FM and Internet radio. I will be looking the social benefits of participation in the arts:

Personal: growth in confidence, creative and transferable skills, social lives are improved through friendships, enjoyment and involvement in the community. In a wider social context: confidence of minority and marginalised groups is gained, promoting social cohesion. There is empowerment of a community to be involved in local affairs, a strengthened commitment to place and an ability to tackle problems. Provides the opportunity to take positive risks, contribute to education and personal and social change (Matarasso, F, 1997: ‘Use or Ornament? Social impact of participation in the arts’ p79-81).



I have secured a practical intern-ship at Soundart radio from September through till December 2010. This community radio station's location, programming and programmers, its geographical area, it's international and local outreach projects and its ethos and manifesto are all relevant to my enquiry.
My particular artistic interest lies with

Transmissions that Publicise the Private, or through an opening of dialogic space create new energy and directions within a social order.

Programming that re-instates the authority of chaos and chance, within the context of a functioning community.

Broadcasting that foregrounds and celebrates ambiguity and individuality, supported by structures of acceptance and value.

Work that transforms attention into action and revitalizes languages’ and radio’s uses in the public sphere.


I intend to immerse myself in the life of this small radio station for my time there.

Monday 6 September 2010

Invitation for contributions to Ssllooww Ssuunnddaayy have been posted through soundart's mailing list, and hopefully through Falmouth Uni mail too- though this has proved harder than expected, due to their regulations on student in-house mailing. Other venues for canvassing are being sought...
I have been attending a series of workshops set up and run by Magda Crace (artist and sonic producer who broadcasts as' Oima' on Soundartradio and in Amstadam), which are generating material for a special sslloowwssuunnddaayy on World Mental Health Day 10/10/10. The synopsis the Dartington Arts brochure, (which also includes a week of film at the local indie cinima such as Tarnation, The Soloist, LT22 Radio LA Colifata), reads:
"Soundartradio, in collabaration with The Arts at Dartington, are braodcasting a 24 hour radio festival that will include a enthusiatic vocal and instrumental composition of indefinate form: an unsane rhapsody- a stream ofconsciousness, sounds of changing mood, colour,and tonality, compiled form local workshop participants and led by Magda Crace."
These workshops I have attended thus far follow a gentle yet experimental form: chat, tea, composition, discussion, jamming- all participants have a active interest in mind states, having experienced episodes of 'altered conciousness' or knowing those that have, or having had worked in the areana of mental health. I find diffiuclty in titling insanity/unsanity/crazy/mad/mental difficulties/altered conciousness/deliriums/ mania under one heading, since experientual highs and lows are the province of most living beings, and as someone very clever once said, ‘insanity is the only sane response to an insane world”.
Using radio to share ideas about this subject is not new-
"I have the impression that through radio one can be less susceptable to prejudice and more one's self. It may be paradoxical to have such a public medium the site of more honesty,more nakedness but as I have said being in close proximity is constraining and stiffleing, thus the act of addressing no one in particular might free up tongues." (Michel Theroz,1992, dirtector of the collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, switzerland). Artists such as Antonin Artaud and Christof Migone have presented work that challeges the place of non sane expressivity in society.
Being involved with such a workshop explores the way radio can form community, help a voice be found, and expressed, and valued. Mental issues are a fine place to start- one way small radio works by being responsive to the individual, and we see that mental issues often arise form situations in which a individual feels they have no value, control or community of understanding. Western medical care is often seen as historically less rehabilitative and more a force of control, judgement and punishment for those who are suffering/experiencing kinds of 'abnormality' in the way they think or perceive. Projects such as this seek ways to reassess and bring more reasoned and caring understanding towards such issues.


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