smokey shakey nicotine withdrawal depression and worries....

ooooo hello stranger where have you been?
for the past 14 days i have been- going slightly insane :-)
I have been suffering from a nicotine habit for the last 17 years, and two weeks ago today, I finally undeniably realized that i am an actual grown up adult, and decided to kick the weed and 'man up'. A addiction can be broken, and in all ways, life would be better if I stopped smoking. So i have- and, believe me, it is. Just, I have been negligent to this radio project whist undergoing cold turkey (i did record my last fag, and have been scripting some of the phychosis as a study for broadcast... ). Too much weeping, too much black blues, too much tiredness, weakness, depression, fear, anxiety, i see why so many people don't suceed in giving up- it ain't a nice experience. So where does that put us now?
sslloowwssuunnddaayy-
1 Cathryn Morgan Richards cow bells
2 Jakoh, Barry dillon, Augustine Leuder- three artists, great work
3'summer' fail ( lovely Oblivian Substanshall repeats, and blank airspace !!!)
and this sunday------ work secured for broadcast so far 4 minutes :-) (Yo Fizz:-)
I feel like I have come through a long tunnel of darkness, and re-emerged finally, but into a place where momentum has been... lost. how to get back on track? How to reassure artists that this programe is not a waste of space, and it is a valued point of exhibition? I am sorry for this confusion, lack of professionalality- but make no apologies= there is never a good time to pack in smoking and it had to be done RIGHT THEN, and lunching out life for 2 weeks is not a bad price to pay for health, wealth and a happier kid. (thanking those whose love and understanding kept me going- you know who you are AND YOU TOTALLY ROCK X X X)
Maybe those that have listened in may have been disapointed by the lack of coherence between what was being requested/offered/advertised and how the space was being used :-( the issue being, contributors may be disinclined to participate in this show if it is not fuctioning.... ie-, in live performace terms,' come see and maybe contribute to this amazing performance', and you get to the venue, and the theatre is closed. Repeatedly. Not good! One could argue thats a little bit fluxus, but essentially, its a big bit lame. Radio space is precious- not to be wasted!

but then is then and this is now- resolution. what of this sunday?
start here+ it begins fabrications spilling outward consetric ripples blips and bleeps words and scars and hearts and dinners
these things break against what makes me tic taking to new and old and experience and plain old dreAMS
s,moking- i have just survived the most risky transition of my life (another- don't they all feel like that?)
i put all else on hold an , wiping tears and snot away with my sleeve, made a move towards a better future. I stopped smoking.
WHAT THE FUSK THAT DOESN'T COUNT AS MAjESTIC
yes it fucking does THESE THINGS ARE IN NO WAY OF INTEREST TO OTHERS- instead of making a work form my hospital bed, as i die of cancer,
titled, "My daughter cries and lights a candle for the mother who followed the path of least resistance into the mouth of the beast"my last ever audio work of heart beats, coughs, weeping, regret and amazment gasped - i bite the bullet and casting my self into a steel
sided reponsibility
life doesn't last forever and small victories might be the only ones left....

so stop! and she did
and what happened? i free-fell i cried like a baby -still doing that, regularly, turned through full 360 giroscpoing baby girl
embodied, lost
woman. i recorded MY LAST EVER CIGGERETTE i smoked it , and have moved into a new phase. Why did it take such a amount of energy
to take thopse steps? away from my self?
opportunity arose and co-incided with this non smoking situation- my whole life ground to a car crash halt through the two weeks i
grappled with self control- the radio show, dear and holy wild thing, fell to the road side, fixed vision lazer like consentration, on a goal

just to stay on the straight and narrow, commited to maintaining that alone- bouying myslef up, when everrything felt like sinking
but, i seem to have survived.....

i need to appologise for a mis application of time enerrgy attention what- its just so annoying, this project
lostlooses momentum becase i take my eye from the ball and essentually, am reliant on... others! ha! this could be so beautiful
sound events unlike stationary texts or fixed media (replayable) have a emphemaeral nature that causes mistakes to have greaterweight- if a paper publication for cafe tables is lame, a avid reader, will still pick up and flick through, chancing 30 seconds on the
possiblility that the editor might have changed or the writers been upgraded- but the show has been the equivilant of a blank book, or repeats where something original was promised, becuase i was busy weeping and trying not to feak ut.
i'm sorry! i am sorry! i am so bloody sorry- this platfrom is open its open it is so open- ues it- use it make it hsppen its open i could go and do a live 24 four hour broadcast of appologies and invitations for work :-)
but instead, i humbly trust and hold tight to the wish to participate in 'the great sound'.

coming soon- ? :-)

first sslloowwssunnddaayy, community forays

MORE COW BELL! Or maybe goats... Our first broadcast show consists of a work by Cathryn Morgan Richards looped EXTENSIVELY. i took my kid and radio to the community orchard at the back of our estate and scrumped apples for a crumble whilst listening- very Alpine it felt too :-) Next week's Sunday is still in planning. We have had many interested and interesting responses, and if work is forth coming (good artists are always so busy) the shows will be fascinating...

I have been considering the definition of 'community' I wish to use for my CEP.
community commune comrade communicate communal
We can conceptually align hearing (like watching) with detached registration of external phenomena. But listening (like seeing) implies a dialogic approach to what ever data's are being processed. Theodor Adorno wrote in 'Minima Moralia:Reflections on a Damaged life'1974, on the danger posed by mechanically reproduced music/media to community in capitalist cultures- that media were offering a 'we-ness' and 'accompanied solitude' that substituted it's own representational space (pre-defined, safe, reliable, scripted, contained) for the real world of direct experience. I am interested in listening cultures that respond to this by forming their own dialogic communities, through radio or other sonic practices, as 'cultures of resistance' (according to bell hooks). Joseph Beuys said "Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system [-]". Definitions are widened when ever dialogue is 'entered into', and process and ambiguity cherished. SO much important work happens through this engagement :-)

so community: ARTS community, radio community, geographical community, minority community, rural community, political sexual shopping hobbyist criminal community.

I have been surveying my immediate locality (soundart radios' home town, Totnes, in Devon) asking individuals to share their ideas of 'community' (yes, asking my community to define community! CLEVER!) generating audio recordings for a radio piece later in the autumn. As well as conceptual definitions, I have been asking people to share their alliances, and asking where people invest their time/resources. Taking as many examples (students, healers, policemen, coffee shop drifters, shop and market workers, street sweepers and sleepers, children and OAP's, dog walkers, football players, solicitors, teachers, cafe staff, artists, young mothers, travellers, torists etc etc etc) as possible will allow me to generate a sound picture of Totnes on which to build a more concrete definition.

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.

invite

SOUND ART!

Do you have some to share?

COULD YOU FILL AN HOUR OF RADIO? 12 HOURS? 24?

Soundart Radio presents

‘ ssllooww rraaddiioo ssuunnddaayy ‘

- a season of 24 hour installation through autumn 2010-

our ears are just as keen any day of the week, but this show is a specific slot for progressive developments and time based performances- a weekly opportunity to break out of the boundaries of radio schedules, to let a sound continue until it drives us mad or we love it completely. It could be the ideas’ simplicity that carries it... just a dripping tap. Or its complexity... a multitude of voices, overlapping, never repeating. It could be a live installation of insects close to the mic, or electronic noise buzzing away to itself.

Do you have work that could be broadcast?

Dreamy installations, soundscapes, pointless noises, different types of silence, pretentious twaddle, nature, voices, boring stuff, drones, fuzzy fluff. Breathing, sighing, sleeping, eating, listening, waking up and going outside. Washing machines, computers, newspapers, floorboards, stuck records and broken toys. Non radio for a switched off audience. Unfinished work welcome. Please show your support of small stations, though this mail is a outreach across the globe- share share share

For more information and to contribute please contact

j.wellwood@dartington.ac.uk

Soundart Radio 102.5 fm www.soundartradio.org.uk

The Gallery Dartington Hall Totnes Devon UK TQ96EJ

The ssllooww ssuunnddaayy project is going to be fun- not the confused project it would be if left only to me…. Above is the test invite for work, mostly fashioned from Lucinda’s previous canvassing. I will add graphics, dress it up some, and get it sent across the globe…. What will be contributed? Who will listen?

Next on my list is- some clarity on the ideas I am bringing to this enquiry. Previous posts seem a little politically unclear/ artistically shaky!!! This project is not an attempt to press beliefs or ‘save radio’ ha! But to seek out and celebrate ways of reasserting what a community/free radio does when “it is a real instrument against forms of intimidation and domestication!” (Gauttari F, 1990, Popular Free Radio), I think modes of communication have been undermined by commercial interests, communities fractured by political imperatives, and that this controlled system of specialists and owned rights and prescribed information drains the vigor from society. Small radio offers a forum for debate, exhibition, inclusion and celebration, which counters the ‘safe’ (yet stifling) offerings of mass media, and encourages a more human model for community and co-existence. This is worked through a real time feedback system of listeners/producers/listeners producing.

Resonance fm serves ‘a community of artists'.  I love much of what can be heard there, but I'm walking streets where those without an arts education walk, and can't help but note the uncommunicatable frustration of those without valid voices. THAT IS THE ISSUE at stake, and I think small radio offers different approaches to hearing, listening, speaking and understanding which, starting small, makes the world a better place, without the exclusivity that  'arts' can unfortunately cause. Where is the cutting edge?

sslloowwssuunnddaayy. . . fingers crossed

I go to see Lucinda Guy today. She is a station manager and radio producer at Soundart102.5. We are to discuss the slowsunday show. To be frank i am unsure that our visions actually match up? I am a mother to a 9 year old- I do not really find the time to invest in listening to much time based sonic installation (though I can understand its virtues) and I am feeling that proper management of that project would have best suited a musician or composer who understands musical language better. My best dream for the slowsunday is that it works like a gallery- all kinds of artists sharing there work, from local poets, to tone minimalists, to saga/story tellers, to 'real life art', to composers and recordists of all persuasions. 24 hours is a lot of time to fill, even if it is less work on a loop....... :-) We hopefully will decide on a form of invitation and send it out through colleges, forums, other radio stations and generate some interest and contributions for the show...

a blogging experiment on CEP issues

Soundart Radio 102.5 FM is a community radio station for the Dartington and Totnes area of South Devon. We are an arts radio station providing space on the airwaves to listen, play and experiment with sound. Our programmes are made by volunteers who thrive in an atmosphere of trust and creative freedom. All kinds of people visit, talk, play music and present radio shows. We leave the studio door open and the sounds of passing birds, conversations and steam trains filter into our broadcasts.