nepantlas – fugitive radio

Fugitive Radio presented its first live ‘radio fanzine’, Radio Wok Helsinki (initially title Radiowalk Helsinki) for Nepantlas#4, Akademie Schloss Solitude curated by Daphne Dragona. Produced by myself, Sumugan Sivanesan, and Irina Mutt with the support of Sophea Lerner, the fanzine featured the multimedia artist Suva.

Notions of the ‘audio fanzine’ and of ‘performance as publishing’ were initially raised by Irina, which we developed as an experimental processes, circling around the themes of displacement, vulnerability, solidarity and self-defence. We arrived at narrative formats that referenced the printed zine, such as comics, recipes, interviews and a centrefold.

The performance occurred on Schloss Solitude’s video conferencing platform from which an audio stream was broadcast on {openradio}. Those who registered and attended the event online, were privy to extra visual and text elements and were also invited to participate or intervene. (Noone took up the offer, but we understand it could take a while to get familiar with the process!). There was also a discussion afterwards, which was also not part of the radio fanzine.

»Nepantlas« is an online program curated by Daphne Dragona. It focuses on projects that introduce social and technological infrastructures based on relationships of care, respect, and interdependence.

For Nepantlas #4 Irina Mutt and I will be performing an ‘audio fanzine’ live online for Akademie Schloss Solitude. Our performance will be followed by a Q&A. Attendance is limited and prior registration is required to participate. Please register until November 17, 2020 with signup@akademie-solitude.de

Our performative zine will also be ‘published’ / broadcast on {openradio} via Fugitive Radio’s stream: https://play.openradio.in/public/fugitive-radio

Nepantlas #04 »Fugitive Radio: Radiowalk Helsinki«
Sumugan Sivanesan & Irina Mutt

Curated by Daphne Dragona
November 19, 2020, 2–3:30 pm (CET)

Guests of the fourth online edition of »Nepantlas« are Sumugan Sivanesan and Irina Mutt. Both run »Fugitive Radio« : an urban artistic research project on radio as a social practice, which is designed as a platform for migrant voices and experiences. »Radiowalk Helsinki« is a live radio fanzine developed as part of »Fugitive Radio«.

»Fugitive Radio« is an urban artistic-research project about radio as a social practice. It proposes to be a platform for migrant voices and experiences and is aligned with anticolonial trajectories. »Radiowalk Helsinki« is a live radio-fanzine that is developed as part of »Fugitive Radio«. As with Gloria Anzaldúa’s ideas about »mestiza«, it is an inclusive, accumulative and elastic structure, operating between thresholds as a way to embrace contradictions and ambiguity. It approaches the means and infrastructures of online radio as instruments of dispersal and play. Drawing on the ephemeral qualities of micropublishing and (online) performance, it employs strategies of replication, disruption and distribution.

»Radiowalk Helsinki« listens into urban environments and network processes, weaving through fragments of texture, text, voice and music. It links listening to haptic experiences of scrolling, browsing and clicking to accentuate experiences of migration, fugitivity, surveillance, precariousness and interdependence. For this special »Nepantlas« session, the audience will experience a »radio-fanzine« and explore how performance can become a means of publishing. Shifting across platforms and navigating collectively, »Radiowalk Helsinki« will examine the possibilities and impact of performative distribution when it comes to addressing urgent topics of our times.

»Fugitive Radio« is a project by Sumugan Sivanesan. In collaboration with Irina Mutt, the project will evolve over the coming year across a series of workshops, productions, podcasts and events in Helsinki. »Fugitive Radio« is being developed in collaboration with Pixelache and is supported by the Kone Foundation. It will culminate as a series of live broadcasts/interventions at Pixelache Festival #Burn____, June 2021.