“‘DJ Report/DJ Backlash’: Unsound 2024 Noise…”, Cyclic Defrost.

An obscure projection of Unsound festival logo on the outside walls of a warehouse. foto: Michal Murawski, 2024.

My DJ-focused report about Unsound Festival, 2024 themed Noise has been published, somewhat sentimentally, in Cyclic Defrost. A publication that began as zine affiliated with the Frigid chill club nights in Sydney, circa the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was via Frigid that a first heard, sometimes met and occasionally befriended artists involved in abstract and experimental club music. Very happy to have completed this circle somehow and be warned: it’s a long read!

So while Unsound presented numerous notable concerts, club nights, installations and a discourse program, my focus here is on the festival’s DJ sets. Once in Kraków, I sensed a backlash against DJ culture, as people voiced to me their disdain for the popular Boiler Room platform, complained about the exorbitant fees headlining DJs charge and generally begrudged those who, to paraphrase British producer aya, “make a career out of playing other people’s music”— albeit admitting to having done so herself. Are such criticisms warranted? Let’s cut to the chase.

Read more at Cyclic Defrost.

Foto: Michal Murawski 2024

critical radio

The founders of coletivo digital, São Paulo are gathered around a life-size cut-out of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, in the run up to the Brazilian presidential elections 2022.

foto: Coletivo Digital, São Paulo October 2022.

First published in German in Springerin “ArtGPT,” issue 1/2024.
Later printed in English as a zine for MISS READ Berlin Art Book Fair & Festival 2024 and as a supplement to my contribution to WAVES: Radio as Collective Imagination (2024).

When I initiated fugitive radio in 2020, during the first year of the global COVID19 pandemic, it seemed like everyone was making a podcast, but I wondered who was listening. As “if a radio broadcasts in a forest…,” quipped Sophea Lerner, co-founder of the independent radio platform {openradio}. Curious about the sociabilities arising around (experimental) radio technologies, fugitive radio made a series of live “performance–radio” broadcasts for Pixelache Helsinki Festival #BURN____2021. Since 2021, it has a produced a monthly podcast, “fugitive frequency,” for the radio communities Colaboradio on Freie Radios Berlin-Brandenburg and Helsinki Open Waves. It is also active with lumbung radio/Station of Commons, a platform founded for documenta fifteen (2022), and πNode, a community formed around an ad hoc network of radio infrastructures in France. I have further developed fugitive radio’s collaborative live broadcast events across residencies at Helsinki International Artist Programme (2022), Lanchonete.org (São Paulo, 2022) and Jan van Eyck Academie (JvE) (2022–23).

At an assembly held during documenta fifteen, it was suggested that net radio is a kind of low bandwidth activism taking up digital space in a largely privatized and commercialized World Wide Web. While this may be so, fugitive radio claims that the critical front is not at public facing websites, rather “critical radio” [1] emerges in the kinds of organizing, skill sharing and community building that occurs alongside the production of content. Hack-labs and live broadcast happenings facilitate sharing, co-learning and generate enthusiasm for alternative networked-sociabilities. While such gatherings are often premised on pursuing free and open (source) culture and promoting digital commons, it is arguably conviviality that shapes the micro-politics of experimental radio activity.

counterculture
During my time at JvE, Charles Esche, director of the Van Abbemuseum, suggested that a turn towards audio in exhibitions was in response to “the focus on visuality in visual art.” He proposed that sound in what is traditionally the domain of visual arts, transgresses the separation of senses that occurred during modernity and the distinct disciplines defined by art academies and conservatoires. If exhibitions are making radios appear, how might they critique conventional aesthetic, intellectual and institutional practices?

“Instagram is my portfolio,” a visual artist once told me. In the 1990s the World Wide Web became the graphical interface for the internet. With the advent of social media in the early 2000s, notably Facebook, Instagram and now Tik-Tok, it seems that much of net culture has become by default visual culture. In 2022, I met with Coletivo Digital, a rare group still active in Brazil who recall the optimism of the early World Wide Web. They suggested that the emancipatory and experimental drives of open culture movements had coalesced in net radio. Indeed, I propose that current (net-)radio practices are a counterculture to prevailing pics-or-it-didn’t-happen social media engineered relations.

“Make friends not art” was a phrase that memed during the Jakarta-based collective ruangrupa’s takeover of documenta fifteen (2022), also known as “lumbung one,” valorizing of the social aspects of art-making over its commodified objects. Friendship was thus politicized as it determined the communities, practices and issues leveraged through infrastructural art power. This was notable as evidence of antisemitism alongside racist and transphobic attacks rocked the event, leading to censorship, withdrawals and the resignation of Documenta’s Director General Sabine Schormann. Nevertheless, solidarities resolved among those remaining and initiatives, such as lumbung radio, are ongoing. Organizations have since proposed to “learn from lumbung,” a reference to an Indonesian community rice barn, emphasizing the pooling and redistribution resources among inter-local networks and collective planning. [2] I think it would also be wise to learn from the Humboldt Forum.

normalization
I first encountered plans to re-house collections from Berlin’s Ethnological Museum and Museum of Asian Art in an architectural monument recalling Prussian imperialism at the conference “Postcolonial Justice”, University of Potsdam, 2014. [3] At panels about the restitution of sensitive objects, I learned of Tanzania-born Mnyaka Sururu Mboro’s campaign to return human remains held in these collections. In July 2017, Bénédicte Savoy, an art historian specializing in restitution and provenance, resigned from the Humboldt Forum’s advisory board stating:

The architecture signals that history can be undone. But people who ask for the return of stolen objects are told that history cannot be undone. [4]

Her sensationalized departure sparked debate about Germany’s colonial legacy. Groups protesting the Forum included: No Humboldt 21, Decolonize Berlin Alliance, Africa Avenir and Barazani. The Coalition of Cultural Workers Against the Humboldt Forum (CCWAH) formed in 2020, objecting to the crowning of this public-funded building erected on the site of East Germany’s former parliament, with a privately funded golden orb and cross. Bearing an inscription that demands “the living and the dead kneel unconditionally before Jesus”, they opposed the Forum’s assertion of Christian domination. [5]

After a series of staggered openings, the Humboldt Forum was inaugurated on 20 July 2021 as a space for criticism and debate, discursively reframing its problematic collections. While the CCWAH announced that they would “refuse to participate” others resigned to work with it—I suspect because precarious artists cannot afford to refuse a paying gig, especially migrants whose visas are dependent on such contracts. Indeed, the Forum welcomes critical readings of its collection by so-called “People-Of-Colour” whose participation validates its means of knowledge production, neutralizing the potency of their critique. Activists I’ve met complain that the Forum has appropriated their language, community-building methods and commissioned work from thinkers whom they reference. After much pressure, the Forum announced a restitution deal with Nigeria in 2022 to return over 1000 objects, including two prized “Benin Bronzes.” Recently a friend disclosed attending a free hip-hop dance class at the Forum, confirming that despite lingering disquiet some dissenting artists had normalized their relations with it.

solidarity
Even in the progressive capital of Berlin, solidarities among its creative scenes are uneasy. At the time of writing, the war in Israel–Palestine has divided the city which is home to significant communities linked to this conflict. The artist and broadcaster Nathan Gray calls it “the new Berlin Wall.”

In January 2024, the Berlin Senate adopted an anti-discrimination clause as a condition of cultural funding. With an emphasis on antisemitism over other forms of racism, such as islamophobia and anti-blackness, the Senate controversially chose a working definition promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) adding an extension that conflates persecution of Jewish people with criticisms of Israel. Many are anxious about this curbing of free speech and artistic expression as wars escalate worldwide, and noticeably it is Palestinians who have been silenced. As Jewish critics of Zionism question if they are being subject to antisemitism by German police when arrested for protesting the war, those from countries where support for Palestine is the norm, call out the hypocrisy of German institutions’ decolonial interests. In response, a campaign to “Strike Germany” has gained traction. Recalling the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction campaigns against Israel declared antisemitic by the Bundestag in 2019, it demands that the state “protect artistic freedom,” “focus the fight against antisemitism” and “combat structural racism.”

When I moved to Berlin in 2017, curators I met sought to politicize their practices. Now some admit to being strategically silent, contributing to a climate of self-censorship and antagonism that recalls East Germany’s Stasi era or McCarthyism in the United States. As spaces holding multiple perspectives are dramatically reduced, what are the alternative platforms for critical debate?

While German mainstream media echoes the state’s unequivocal support for Israel, a group of artists and intellectuals are providing counter-narrative resources. Learning Palestine have so far compiled two twelve-hour radio programs, “Until Liberation I & II”, collaborating with Bethlehem-based Radio Alhara. Birthed in 2020 among friends isolating during the pandemic, Radio Alhara takes its name from the Arabic word for neighborhood. Interpersonal organizing and low operating costs afforded it to function beyond the “constrains of social media and corporate controlled networks” and it was welcomed among a globalized cultural community as a forum where otherwise silenced Palestinian voices—and music—are made audible. Since first airing in October 2023, “Until Liberation” has been rebroadcast on several sympathetic platforms including lumbung radio, suggestive of participating radios’ (infra)structural solidarity.

(an)optics
At JvE I learned that optics is a primary concern of exhibition-making—exhibitions must look “professional” regardless of intent. I suspect fugitive radio’s critique is indulged in such contexts precisely because of its low visibility—indeed there is nothing to see! But who listens? My friends and peers assure me that they follow online, however, I predict fugitive radio’s legacy will be publishing; it produces podcasts and publishes zines that leave a trace of critical radio practice in contemporary art.

I’ve found some affinity between experimental radio makers and independent art book publishers and fugitive radio has participated in several related fairs including: Under The Leaf, Helsinki (2022), The Fabulous Books Are Bridges, Rotterdam (2023) and MISS READ, Berlin (2023). Not long ago I ran into a curator of book events clutching a copy of Rebecca Ruth Gould’s Erasing Palestine (2023) concerning the IHRA. When I asked if he should be seen with this book in Berlin, he laughed and replied that it was not a problem on a book display, “but if it were an exhibition…”. His remark indicates tiers of visibility that are subject to differing scrutiny and censorship. After all, who reads books these days?

As an “anoptic” practice, might radio modulate the functions of art institutions as instruments for the commodification of creativity and the enforcing of state interests? Collaborating with community-developed platforms fugitive radio promotes alternative sociable medias. It approaches radio not as a mass media, but rather as a catalyst for coming together to discuss, experiment and play. Co-opting the discursive impulses of institutional art to co-produce responsive micro-media—promoted by word-of-mouth and distributed hand-to-hand—could critical radio circumvent authoritarian oversight and the performative pressures of corporate social medias under which professionalized art is subsumed?

January 2024

[1] A term proposed to me by Amanda Sarroff, writing advisor to Jan van Eyck
Academie.

[2] For example: “Learning from lumbung Public Forum on documenta fifteen” 23–24
January 2023, Jubilee, Brussels; “Lumbung Practice” temporary masters programme,
Sandberg Instituut, De Appel and Gudskul.

[3] Gesellschaft für Anglophone Postkoloniale Studien, “Postcolonial Justice”, 29 May–1
June 2014, Potsdam and Berlin.

[4] Cited in dpa, “Expertin: Humboldt-Forum verschweigt Ursprung seiner Sammlungen”, Monopol, 21 July 2017.

[5] Noëlle BuAbbud, “Nightmare at the Museum: An Interview with Coalition of Cultural Workers Against the Humboldt Forum,” Berlin Art Link, 5 February 2021.

Critical Radio, Springerin: “Art GPT” 01/2024

Hideakie Gushiken sits in an urban walkway. Wearing a lumbung radio tee shirt, his eyes are closed as he sings and plucks a stringed instrument. In the foreground of the image is the fluffy wind break of a hand held audio recorder.

“Hideakie Gushiken, documenta fifteen, 2022.” foto: Sumugan Sivanesan

“Critical Radio: Community Building and Solidarity in a Low-Bandwidth Medium” published in Springerin 1/2024, “ArtGPT.” Excerpts below:

At an assembly held during documenta fifteen, it was suggested that net radio is a kind of low bandwidth activism taking up digital space in a largely privatized and commercialized World Wide Web. While this may be so, fugitive radio claims that the critical front is not at public facing websites, rather “critical radio” emerges in the kinds of organizing, skill sharing and community building that occurs alongside the production of content. Hack-labs and live broadcast happenings facilitate sharing, co-learning and generate enthusiasm for alternative networked-sociabilities. While such gatherings are often premised on pursuing free and open (source) culture and promoting digital commons, it is arguably conviviality that shapes the micro-politics of experimental radio activity.

“Make friends not art” was a phrase that memed during the Jakarta-based collective ruangrupa’s takeover of documenta fifteen (2022), also known as “lumbung one,” valorizing of the social aspects of art-making over its commodified objects. Friendship was thus politicized as it determined the communities, practices and issues leveraged through infrastructural art power. This was notable as evidence of antisemitism alongside racist and transphobic attacks rocked the event, leading to censorship, withdrawals and the resignation of Documenta’s Director General Sabine Schormann. Nevertheless, solidarities resolved among those remaining and initiatives, such as lumbung radio, are ongoing. Organizations have since proposed to “learn from lumbung,” a reference to an Indonesian community rice barn, emphasizing the pooling and redistribution resources among inter-local networks and collective planning. I think it would also be wise to learn from the Humboldt Forum.

When I moved to Berlin in 2017, curators I met sought to politicize their practices. Now some admit to being strategically silent, contributing to a climate of self-censorship and antagonism that recalls East Germany’s Stasi era or McCarthyism in the United States. As spaces holding multiple perspectives are dramatically reduced, what are the alternative platforms for critical debate?

fugitive frequency, season 3, episode 10: post-apocalyptic partying with Juan, Selfies & Sandro, Radio Tropiezo

radiotropiezo.org

This month’s episode is a conversation with Juan, Selfies and Sandro from Radio Tropiezo, that is part of the collective Cráter Invertido [Instagram] in Mexico City. Radio Tropiezo is involved in the lumbung radio/Station of Commons network and we met recently in Berlin during the Miss Read Berlin Art Book Festival & Fair, 22–24 September at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Selfies and Sandro, who are also part of the DJ collective Chakanais [Soundcloud], and Juan DJ’d the opening party of the 3-day event in HKW’s restaurant and bar.

Our conversation touches on the post-apocalyptic party culture of Mexico city and features excerpts of their sets — Selfies and Sandro spinning cumbia and Juan playing high energy Italo disco and house. Many thanks to Eddie from Station of Commons for these recordings.

“Karaoke Theory/Karaoke Therapy”, Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis 109, 2023

A cartoon by Olav Westphalen (2021). A professor, with black hair and glasses and a student with light hair, sit at a desk. The professor is holding a copy of the student’s thesis and in the speech bubble she says: "As your supervisor, I recommend a much smaller font," Student thought bubble: "Brilliant" Professor continues: "You don’t want people to actually read this."

Cartoon by Olav Westphalen (2021),lifted from the X-disciplinary Congress on Artistic Research and Related Matters, Vilnius Academy of Arts, October 14-17th, 2021.

Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis: The Uses and Abuses of Artistic Research in Post-Disciplinary Academia, No. 109, 2023.

Editors of this issue: Aldis Gedutis, Vytautas Michelkevičius

https://aaav.vda.lt/journal/issue/view/aaav109

This Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis (AAAV) issue brings together selected papers presented during the congress. Some of the articles are written by scholars and some by artist-researchers from all around the world. Aldis Gedutis and Vytautas Michelkevičius lay the ground for artistic research and discuss the labyrinth of inter-, trans- and other prefixes in arts and sciences as well as justify the trans-epistemic community as the caretaker of artistic research. John Hillman claims the practice is a symptom of research, while David Maroto presents “fictocritical” writing as a lifesaving boat for artists who want to seamlessly merge their fiction writing skills with (critical) theories. Magda Stanová guides us to artistic thinking in scientific research, while Greg Bruce flies us over the Atlantic Ocean and presents outlines of the local (Canadian and French-speaking world) concept of artistic research – research-creation. Bettina Minder and Pablo Müller return us back to earth in order to see how artistic research works in doctoral programs and courses in Switzerland. Andrew J. Hauner helps us witness an experimentally written research paper and question the existing formats of research outcomes. Raivo Kelomees proposes and defends a challenging hypothesis about the animistic relationship between a viewer and an artwork, whereas Sumugan Sivanesan allows us to swing and linger between karaoke theory and therapy. Finally, Christiane Keus proclaims the present condition as Postresearch!

The Fabulous Books are Bridges Art Book Fest, 8 & 9 July 2023

A hand coming from the left of the frame holds the top edge of a poster promoting The Fabulous Books are Bridges Art Book Fest. In the background is a bushy plant with flowers.


Presentations by Nazir Fadzilah of SVARA art journal and Tintabudi Bookshop (Kuala Lumpur), Priya Jay of Future Commons and STUART and Beatrix Pang of Zine Coop and Small Tune Press (Hong Kong). The panel was organised by Rose Nordin of STUART and Rabbits Road Press (London) and hosted by PrintRoom (Rotterdam).


fugitive radio is broadcasting live from The Fabulous Books are Bridges Art Book Fest, 8 & 9 July, organised by PrintRoom Rotterdam.

With: antoine lefebvre editions /Art Zines / Hon Books (Paris), Artists in Solidarity (Rotterdam), Beatrix Pang/ Zine Coop/ Small tune press (Hong Kong), Bebebooks (Gent), Bur-Rose (The Hague), Colorama (Berlin), Eleanor Vonne Brown / The Nose (Walton on the Naze), F.G.A.(Rotterdam), Futura Resistenza (Rotterdam/Brussels), Gloria Glitzer (Berlin), Good Neighbour (Amsterdam), Heiba Lamara /OOMK (London), Jap Sam Books (Prinsenbeek), Jesse Presse (Amsterdam), Knust (Nijmegen), Limestone Books (Maastricht), Lu Lin / Not just a collective (Arnhem), Mono Rhetoric (The Hague), Nazir Fadzilah/ SVARA art journal/ Tintabudi Bookshop (Kuala Lumpur), Onomatopee (Eindhoven), Other Forms Berlin/Chicago, Pei-Ying Lin (Taiwan/Eindhoven), PrintRoom (Rotterdam), Roots to Fruits (Arnhem), Rose Nordin / STUART/Rabbits Road Press (London), Sarmad Magazine (Rotterdam), Stefanie Leinhos (Leipzig), Tender Hand Press (Glasgow), Teuntje Fleur (Schiedam), The Eriskay Connection (Breda), This was a project… (Rotterdam), Unformed Informed (Rotterdam), Valiz (Amsterdam) and more.

fugitive frequency, season 3, episode 4: NightShift, “Creative Labour”

A group of people with their backs to the camera are crowded around a shopfront entrance on a chilly night.

“Creative Labour” is the first audio fanzine documenting NightShift, an all night publishing-performance-happening occurring over March 2-3, 2023, at Limestone Books in Maastricht [Instagram] and made in collaboration with Rose Nordin. We streamed live for six hours straight on πnode and {openradio}.

In order of appearance “Creative Labour” features the voices of:
Riar Rizaldi whose film Becquerel (2021) screened before the broadcast, Maud van den Beuken who gives a live audio description followed by Merien Rodrigûes (São Paulo) [Instagram] and Anastasia Diavasti (Athens) [Instagram] who dialed in their audio descriptions. Chen Jehn, one of the proprietors of Limestone Books discusses their ideas for the shop with prompts from book artist Michiel Romme and Kim David Bots, who also contributed live improvised music. There is a brief excerpt from a pre-recorded interview with Jo Frenken who established the print studio at the Jan Van Eyck Academie and Rose Nordin gets in the last (delirious) word. Wen Hsuan Chang’s audio piece Paper Ripping Paper can be heard in the background, alongside the music of the Commodores.

Foto: Maud van den Beuken

NightShift at Limestone Books Maastricht, 2–3 March 2023

NightShift promo image, a very lo-res pixelated logo.

NightShift at Limestone Books, Thursday March 2, 11pm – Friday March 3, 6am. Broadcasting live from midnight on http://p-node.org.

Set your alarm clocks! Maastricht art book store Limestone Books [Instagram] opens for 24 hours on the first Thursday of each month. On March 2 it will be joined by Rose Nordin and fugitive radio [Instagram], installing a print salon, radio studio and screening room for the NightShift.

At 11pm we will watch Riar Rizaldi’s short film, Becquerel (2021), and host a Q&A with the director. Between midnight and 6am (March 3) we will collectively design and print a zine, Transcription from the night waves, for participants to take home at dawn. Simultaneously we will broadcast a live durational “audio fanzine” on http://p-node.org.

For the insomniacs, Maud van den Beuken [Instagram] will entrance us with audio descriptions as Kim David Bots [Instagram] prompts improvised musical interludes. Guests are invited to generate written transcriptions (in any language) and interpretive illustrations to be printed with a Gestetner, typewriter and drawing tools. Songs, chatter, recordings, musical objects and other sound-making matters are all welcome contributions to the radio.

We propose that voices from far and wide punctuate the night air. We encourage callers from local farms, South East Asian book stores and North American mountains to summon their surroundings in a communal dream to be documented and interpreted in print and across networks. Please send your texts and voice messages via WhatsApp: +49 1525 7610023.

Feel free to bring along sleeping bags, pillows, pyjamas, hot water bottles and whatever else you are comfortable to work in. Tea, coffee and nibbles will be provided.

Limestone Books
Grote Gracht 63, Maastricht
https://linktr.ee/limestone_books

Special thanks: Erwin Blok, Jo Frenken, Jan van Eyck Academie, Paul John, πNode

Constant: “Techno-Cul-de-Sac” in MARCH

A close up image of four DIY radio transmitters rendered in lo-res gif. A tangle of copper coils, metal plates, electronic components and wires

fugitive radio attended the “Techno-Cul-de-Sac” worksession, November 20–25, 2022, organised by Constant in Brussels. Co-convened by members Martino Morandi and Peter Westenberg it proposed a collective encounter with Brussels via an investigation of zoning, infrastructure, and technology, bringing together artists, architects, and urban researchers. While the worksession was not about radio per se, radio was the medium that underpinned our activities, concluding as a live “alleycasting” broadcast assisted by Radio Panik and p-node.org. My report for MARCH, “Techno On the Radio” is here. Notably, materials used are licensed with Copyleft 2022 Constant: you may copy, distribute, and modify this material according to the terms of the Collective Conditions for Re-Use (CC4r) 1.0.

fugitive frequency, season 2, episode 6: “A Book Dream” Under The Leaf Art Book Fair, Helsinki

A black and white image of ‘Under The Leaf’ window signage, a reflection of a housing block is in the background.


‘A Book Dream’ is an audio fanzine documenting Under The Leaf Art Book Fair at Monitoimitila O., Helsinki, 14–15 May. The event was organised by Hikari Nishida of The Temporary Bookshelf (Instagram), Sara Blosseville of Fetiche Editions (Instagram) and Kati Ruohomäki of Monitoimitila O. (Instagram). fugitive radio broadcast live on {openradio} from the Book Fair Party and this podcast collects conversations had with several stallholders including:
Tuukka Kaila from Rooftop Press
Laua from Artsos (Instagram)
Sadet Hirsimäki (Instagram)
Toivo Heinimaki from UTU Press (Instagram)
Caitlan and Joni from TUO TUO project space and residency
Sezgin Boynik from Rab-Rab Press
Heini Korhonen representing Rik Art Books
Dominik Fleishmann
and Camilo Cortes.
‘A Book Dream’ also includes excerpts of performances from laua rip and Victor Gogly (bandcamp) alongside music from Silvana Mammone and Ekheo released on True Aether (bandcamp) and Archie Schepp and the Bill Dixon Quintet recorded live in Helsinki 1962. See below: