fugitive frequency, season 3, episode 8: “Risky Business” with Mariam Elnozahy

Sumugan Sivanesan and Mariam Elnozahy in the foreground, with their backs to the camera, are seated at a table in front of a laptop. In front of them is the vegetable garden of the Jan van Eyck Academie. People are gathered here in the sunshine during open studio, 2023.

This month’s episode “Risky Business” is a conversation with curator, writer and researcher Mariam Elnozahy, recorded during a live broadcast at the Jan van Eyck Academie’s Open Studios, 24 June 2023. Our discussion takes its cues from a statement issued from Jan van Eyck participants concerned with the unclear expectations and “unacceptable conditions of labour” that shaped this much anticipated three day public event. It circulates around issues of artistic production, professional practice and the commodification of identities with reference to exhibition making. Furthermore, this podcast demonstrates how a practice of fugitive radio can offer a counter-platform to circumvent the well established trope of institutional critique in contemporary art.

The podcast begins with the voice of Rose Nordin from an earlier podcast, “NightShift: ‘Creative Labour’” that connects issues of work, artistic practice, sociability and the other intangible processes that contribute to professionalised arts. Interspersed in the podcasts are segments of electromagnetic noise made with Kim David Bots and computer riddims available on fugitive productions [bandcamp].

<a href="https://fugitive-productions.bandcamp.com/track/language-it-s-really-hard-to">language (it’s really hard to) by fugitive productions</a>

<a href="https://fugitive-productions.bandcamp.com/track/os-rdm">OS_RDM by fugitive productions</a>

image: “fugitive radio: outside inside open studios, with Mariam Elnozahy. Live broadcast from the Jan van Eyck Academie vegetable garden, 24 June 2023.” foto: Tessa Zettel.

fugitive frequency, season 3, episode 6: “Four Cees and a Ka”, in conversation with Rosa de Graaf

LIVE RADIO RECORDING IN PROCESS FEEL WELCOME TO SIT & ENJOY (For this reason the sound works in this exhibition are currently switched off)

Rosa de Graaf is curator at Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam. Recorded in May 2023, our conversation was instigated as a live broadcast at the Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht, where fugitive radio is currently in residence. We address the thematics “Community”, “The Contemporary”, “Conviviality”, “The Curatorial” and “Karaoke” with reference to radio in exhibition practices. We touch on the work of artists Anna Witt and Ayeshah Hameed who have recently exhibited at Melly. This episode also includes audio excerpts from Anna Witt’s Soft Destructions (2023) video below and an episode of Ayesha Hameed’s podcast “Brown Atlantis Radio featuring Ananya Jahanara Kabir”, recorded at Melly in 2022. The main image lifted from Ayesha Hameed’s Instagram, taken during her broadcast at Melly,

Onassis AiR Open Day #6, 12 May: “fugitive feminist empathics”

A view of Vio.Me workers’ co-op, Thessaloniki. A skeleton structure, with the frame of a roof and a concrete base raised above a concrete carpark. Barrels can be seen behind a fence under the roof and wooden pallets are stacked in front. A short staircase is to the right.

Listen back to the broadcast on Movement Radio.
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Anastasia Diavasti of NTIZEZA [Instagram] and Sumugan Sivanesan of fugitive radio planned to research around a common interest in Cassie Thornton’s book The Hologram (2020) and their different approaches to (performative) radio. Spurred on by a timely meeting with Cassie when she was laid over in Athens in March, the duo set about working intuitively. They made recordings at the recent student occupations at Olympia Theatre [Instagram] and Rex Theatre [Instagram], visited the Vio.Me workers co-op in Thessaloniki and primed themselves for telepathy.

For Onassis AiR Open Day #6 they will host a live broadcast to play out their recordings and interviews, and reflect on the themes that emerge with invited guests. These include: dance, solidarity, SF, teargas and cats. It will combine spaces at Onassis AiR, Athens, with spaces at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.

Guests include: Julie Bintje, Jitsa Kon and Mariam Elnozahy, Zahra Malkani & Derica Shields.

Listen in between 18.00–21.00 CEST / 19.00–22.00 EEST on {openradio} and Movement Radio Live 2.

fugitive frequency, season 3, episode 5: Where’s Charles?

This month’s episode is in conversation with Charles Esche, director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Professor at the University of the Arts London, and a renown curator and researcher. It was recorded during a studio visit at the Jan van Eyck Academie, and initially broadcast live as a “porosity session” on the morning of 26 April 2023. I was curious to probe Charles for his thoughts about the recent appearance of radio in contemporary art, and specifically about the inclusion of ruangrupa’s RuRuRadio in the 31st São Paulo Biennal 2014 (main image), for which he was part of the curatorial team. I also asked him to bring in some music. No spoiler! Listen on to hear his selections.

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 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

fugitive frequency, season 3, episode 2: “speakeasy”

A view from above of a studio space in the Jan van Eyck Academie. A group of people sit along the permeter walls and watch a figure operating equipment set on a central table. In the foreground are the legs of a figure dangling over a loft from which the image was taken.

This month’s episode is an (amended) audio document and re-broadcast of a live “speakeasy” event fugitive radio hosted at the Jan van Eyck Academie on a snowy friday evening, January 20. It was also the first in a series of monthly live broadcasts fugitive radio is producing on πnode, a decentralized radio infrastructure streams online and broadcasts on DAB in Mulhouse and Paris. It featured contributions from Jan van Eyck artists-in-residence, in order of appearance [Instagram]: Cristina Flores, AZOOR, Zahra Malkani, Kim David Bots, Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano, Alicja Wysocka and Arpita Akhanda. Foto: Dayna Casey.

The speakeasy was convened as a space for experimentation, spontaneity and improvisation, although it ended being a tightly packed schedule that ran a little over time. A theme of “songs” emerged in the days beforehand, but was not a requirement. The event was broadcast live with the proviso that it would only be documented internally and not be archived online. In the following days, all participants agreed to re-broadcast and upload with some minor amendments to account for time restrictions and sound quality. Many thanks to all who participated, attended and tuned in!

“speakeasy” on πnode

During its time at Jan van Eyck Academie fugitive radio will host a monthly “speakeasy”, as a testing ground for emergent radiophonic formats. These might include sound art, music, poetics, conversation pieces and other forms yet to be discovered and named. fugitive radio seeks to make a space for experimentation, spontaneity and improvisation.

In the coming months the speakeasy will broadcast live at irregular times and from different geographic locations, but always online at TTnode, a decentralised network of servers, antennae and DAB+ (digitial audio broadcasting) boxes scattered around France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The inaugural speakeasy will occur on Friday 20 January 2023 from studio 111 at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht NL. You’re welcome to join from 17.00 and we will go live between 18.00–19.00.