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.

Sunday 5 December 2010

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).
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