Gauttari states that we are "being mentally manipulated through the production of a collective, mass media subjectivity" and uses this text to forward his idea of a ecology that works on three levels- the subjective, the social and the environmental- all three being indivisible for healthy human life and all at risk in the current environment of capitalist/consumerist/rat race/ecoside. His prose is beautiful- reading his work is like being soothed by someone who sees deeply and on many levels and is not phased by the challenges ahead but is able to articulate reasoned passionate responses ....
I want to translate his ideas into CEP speak, or ways that i see his non-limiting definition of holistic community applying to soundart radio. (is it wrong to try to fit Guattari's 'model' over the subject of my study? Is this just a attempt to label something through associating it with ideas that i am choosing from a book randomly? Is this all just the contours of my own desire and enthusiasm? Can i really have been so lucky as to find a model and a practice that fit together like fish in water?)
I recognise through seeing both how soundart radio works [and my meeting with Ed Baxter from Resonance FM too], that the practicalities of running a radio station demand much on a very practical and ‘non theoretical’ level, but there is a approach to radio which can be applied to the stations’ work/ethos that lifts it above being a genre of radio ('art') station providing another product for the market. It is not just the playlist, it is an attitude and application, and how it offers itself as a opportunity for ‘others’- people, strangers, to come together- "their objective being to processually activate isolated and repressed singularities that are just turning in circles" p34.) in other words, radio stations can behave as community spaces that offer a environment giving diverse individuals opportunity to explore thier own singularity(Guttari calls human subjectiveness ‘singularity’), and he states that it as endangered as any other rare species on this planet.
A space to meet, share and work together creatively, with rules in place that support a wholesome subjectification- respecting eachothers' independent voices/work ,and efforts towards exchange and empowerment. On a professional level this results in diverse and original content for broadcast, but also a place where dialogue flourishes, creative work is generated and without many limits and one can
"work on oneself in as much as one is a collective singularity; construct and in a permanent way re-construct this collectivity in a multivalent liberation project. Not in reference to a directing ideology, but within the articulations of the Real. Perpetually recomposing subjectivity and praxis is only concievable in the totally free movement of each of its components, and in absolute respect of their own times- time for comprehending or refusing to comprehend, time to be unified or autonomous, time of identification or of the most exacerbated differences." (Guttari and Negri, 1990: 120)
"It is up to us to resist this mass-media homogenization, which is both desingularizing and infantilizing, and instead invent new ways to achieve the resingularization of existence." (Ian Pindar, Paul Sutton, intorduction, three ecologies)
We resist homogenization as listeners by seeking out work that demands deep listening and offers 'satisfaction by engagement'- conceptually as well as sonically, interacting with work that exercises our intelligence and suggests many modes of being, and also by rejecting work that is supplied as mass media, commercial and repressive. When we are supported by work that challenges and enriches, our imaginations are stretched and that gives us 'permission' to experiment ourselves.