A screwed and wonky mix of voices, some chanting mostly singing and often in tongues. Also karaoke.
Artists and media included
Holly Herndon, Diamanda Galas, NYX, Meredith Monk, Sofia Jannok, Monks Of The Monastery Of Gyuto, Suva and Simo Laihonen, Senyawa, Lyra Pramuk, Lichens (Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe), Pandit Pran Nath, Pink Floyd…
A short piece published on the Kone Foundation blog.
fugitive radio approaches radio as a network medium. Rather than a one-to-many broadcast model, with the privileged broadcaster sending out a signal to listeners who tune in from different locations, fugitive radio pursues radio as an event that is collectively produced and distributed across networks. ‘By many for many’, or more accurately, by a few with other like-minded enthusiasts. For me such radio is poetic, in this atomised era of pandemic when we are locked-down at home dependent on our devices for the vestiges of physically co-present social life.
More at the Kone Foundation.
A recording of the live broadcast of our radiophonic ‘closing ceremony’ for Suva’s exhibition, ‘Untitled’ at Myymälä2, Helsinki.
Participants gathered ‘Under a Fooled Moon’ in the gallery and on SonoBus, a multi-user audio streaming platform, for a live improv session that was streamed on openradio.in Using our voices, Suva guided us through a collective experiment in performing networked radio infrastructure as one would play a musical instrument.
The event was devised in collaboration with Sophea Lerner and Timo Tuhkanen.
9 May 2021 from 17.00
Myymälä2, Helsinki
SonoBus Private Group: underafooledmoon
openradio.in
fugitive radio is convening a collective radiophonic ritual, gathering ‘Under A Fooled Moon’ for a live improv session led by Suva. Guests are asked to bring FM radio receivers, earbuds, smartphones and bluetooth speakers to open a portal between parallel (sonic) universes; you can join onsite at Myymälä2 gallery and online at the SonoBus Private Group: underafooledmoon. The situation is being devised in collaboration with Sophea Lerner and Timo Tuhkanen.
If you are curious to join online or in the gallery with your smartphone, SonoBus is a multi-user platform for streaming audio. It’s great for jammin’. The app is free to download and is available for a range of operating systems, devices and as an audio plug-in: https://sonobus.net/
The event will be streamed live to https://openradio.in/live
From 30 April until 9 May 2021, the Helsinki-based artist Suva exhibits a large series of watercolour portraits of ‘protagonists’ and instrument-sculptures that will be brought to life during impro-performances at Myymälä2. ‘Untitled’ is supported by Artists at Risk. See the Facebook event for dates and times.
fugitive radio is an artistic-research project initiated by Sumugan Sivanesan to research migrant/anticolonial perspectives and music in the North and pursue radio-as-method. fugitive radio is funded by the Kone Foundation and is being made in collaboration with Pixelache. Live broadcasts are supported by {openradio}.
Jammin’ is a mashed-up sonic (anti-)ethnography of online multi-user audio streaming platforms such as Jamulus and SonoBus — MUDs for musos. A montage of recordings made in various jam rooms I entered or initiated in April 2021 have been edited together with excerpts from a conversation I had in November 2020 with Helsinki-based artist Suva [Facebook] and a recording from one of his recent performances.
Special thanks to ‘Europe session’, ‘Jazz so what’, ‘probando‘, ‘talktesttrytipstricks‘, ‘1234_Portugal‘ and ‘Hum Club‘ amongst others. Also a shout out to Peter from Exerzierstraße for introducing me to these spaces and who also makes a cameo.
Suva’s exhibition ‘Untitled’ [Facebook], comprising of a series of water colour paintings and sculptural instruments, can be experienced at Myymälä2 Gallery, Helsinki from 29 April – 9 May 2021. fugitive radio will be presenting a closing ceremony ‘Under a Fooled Moon’ [Facebook] on Sunday 9 May which guests can join in the gallery or on SonoBus.
Music, media and references
Stevie Wonder illustration by Al Harper for the cover of Hotter Than July (1980)
Another sketchy, and somewhat hastily assembled, audio essay. It is now a year since I returned to Europe in the midst of the lockdown in Berlin. To mark my ‘corona aniversário’ I dig into some of the issues surrounding the stalled development of the patent-free ‘Linux Vaccine’ by a co-hort of university-based researchers in Helsinki and as discussed in this thought-provoking article by Ilari Kaila and Joona-Hermanni Mäkinen published in Jacobin in February. The ‘Great Vaccine Race’ provides an entry point to think about some of the issues raised by sociologist and design theorist Benjamin H. Bratton, in his recent call ‘For Planetary Governance’, taking into account anticolonial perspectives…which leads us to the Zapatistas who are sailing to Europe this summer! Also Schools for Chiapas are collecting funds to support the Zapatista’s mobile plant medicine initiative, El Vivero Muy Otro– Medicine for our Bodies; Medicine for the Earth.
Links to music, media and resources used in the program are below.
GNU mascot illustration by Etienne Suvasa circa 1996.
fugitive frequency episode 3 is themed trocar or exchange. As discussed by Léo Custodio in the program, it implies solidarity amongst activists, researchers and artists who come together across power differentials. fugitive radio will continue to pursue this idea to think about dialogues, collaborations and networks that link marginalised communities and how these relations and infrastructures develop counter-hegemonic power. How might this notion of trocar problematised state-backed neoliberal discourses and initiatives of multiculturalism and diversity?
This episode features pre-recorded and edited conversations with the following guests:
Léo Custodio, is a Brazilian-born scholar and activist based in Helsinki. Alongside journalist Monica Gathuo, Léo co-founded the Anti-Racist Media Activist (ARMA) Alliance, who facilitate collaborations and exchanges that bridge the worlds of academia, culture and activism across Finland and Brazil. Léo authored the book Favela Media Activism: Counterpublics for Human Rights in Brazil (2017) based on his PhD research into community media in Rio de Janeiro. He is also organises the Activist Research Network with Camilla Marucco.
Tania Nathan, AKA ‘The Chindian Queen’ [Instagram] is a Malaysian-born poet and author who also lives in Helsinki. Nathan’s recent book Daughter of Immigrants (2020) was funded by ARMA Alliance.
‘Butter Toes’ and ‘Little Boxes’, are community organisers who have negotiated many obstacles as they publish and distribute the first queer anthology of Bangladesh, Boithoki Golpo [Instagram]
Media related to guests, music and productions featured on the program are below.
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ARMA Alliance
Ruskeat Tytöt
Blogueiras Negras
Pehmee Podcast
Kelet
Cafuné na laje
Linn da Quebrada VS. Jup do Bairro
Yeboyah
S.P. Subramanium
fugitive radio: fugitive frequency will be broadcasting on the first Tuesday every month at 17.00 CET on CoLaboRadio, Freie Radios – Berlin Brandenburg: 88,4 MHz in Berlin, 90,7 MHz in Potsdam and streaming on https://fr-bb.org/
fugitive frequency episode 2 is themed ‘homing’. It refers to an instinct characteristic of certain animals that are able to find their way back to their homes, and also to technological devices that enable missiles to seek and hit their targets. ‘Homing’ serves as prompt to think about how to navigate and position oneself in a globalised world. Also, how does one make a home under conditions that are increasingly inhospitable; due to structural violence, colonialism, climate change, etc. Episode 02 is another patchy audio essay featuring the music of Sofia Jannok, Maxida Märak, A Tribe Called Red, Mari Boine and MF DOOM; the voices of Timimie Märak and John Trudell and a conversation with Jari Tamminen.
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Links related to the people and themes discussed in this episode.
Sofia Jannok
http://sofiajannok.com/
Árvas Foundation
‘Árvas tundra is the name of the wide open tundra where Sofia Jannok’s home is around, in Luokta-Mávas Sámi reindeer herding district on Swedish side of Sápmi. Árvas tundra is roadless land, undestroyed by machines and been generously taken care of the indigenous Sámi people for generations. Árvas means ‘generous’. Above all Árvas tundra is grazing land for the reindeer, our source of life, our protector and our future.
http://arvasfoundation.com/
Respect Luokta-Mávas right to protect their ancestral land
Sign the petition: https://www.mittskifte.org/petitions/standwithluoktamavas
Gabriel Kuhn 2020, Liberating Sápmi, PM Press.
https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1051
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An interview by The Final Straw Radio (TFSR) with Maxida Märak, a Sami activist and hip hop singer, and Gabriel Kuhn, an anarchist activist, translator and author, about Kuhn’s book ‘Liberating Sápmi: Indigenous Resistance in Europe’s Far North’. The book contains a political history of the Sámi people, whose traditional lands extend along the north most regions of so-called Sweden, Norway, Finland, and parts of Russia, as well as interviews conduced with over a dozen Sámi artists and activists. This interview was published originally in June 2020 (from Anarchist Radio Berlin).
Maxida Märak
A Tribe Called Red
Timimie Märak
John Trudell Radio Free Alcatraz
Jacob Pagano 2019, ‘The Pirate Radio Broadcaster Who Occupied Alcatraz and Terrified the FBI’.
More videos at the Bay Area Television Archive
Mari Boine
Jari Tamminen
Spektaakkeli Akatemia
Shop Till You Drop Dead (2020)
MF DOOM
Fugitive Radio: Fugitive Frequency will be broadcasting on the first Tuesday every month at 17.00 CET on CoLaboRadio, Freie Radios – Berlin Brandenburg: 88,4 MHz in Berlin, 90,7 MHz in Potsdam and streaming on https://fr-bb.org/
Episode 01, ‘Born to be Wireless’ is an audio essay of sorts, sketching out some of the issues and themes that will be explored in the coming year, such as: feminist and anticolonial network infrastructures, politics of remix, antiracist media activism. It features the voices of Fernanda Monteira, Gilberto Gil, Amoc, Ailu Valle, Jenni Laiti and Suohpanterror! amongst others.
Over September and October 2020 I was privileged to participate in Onassis AiR ‘School of Infinite Rehearsals, Movement I’, convened by Hypatia Vourloumis in Athens. Alongside Federica Bueti, Anastasia Diavasti, Moriah Evans, Daniel Hui and Kostas Tsioukas we produced three podcasts for Movement Radio.
Episode I: Refusal (aired 5 November 2020)
Episode II: Refusal Against (aired 12 November 2020)
Episode III: Sound Is Migrant (aired 26 November 2020)
