Even underground, insomnia follows. There is light at the end of the burrow, and darkness in the pipes and the tunnels in and out of the house. There are ways in and there are ways out. What comes in, and what goes outside?
Online solo concert for Indexical, Santa Cruz California, October 10, 2020.
I performed live with walkie-talkies, radio, and electronics to a video I shot earlier the same day.
Many thanks to Andrew Smith and Indexical; special thanks to Rodrigo Ríos Zunino. https://www.indexical.org/
Evaporation, condensation, sublimation, deposition. Action, activism, control, resistance. How do changes in state involve exchanges of energy? How do changes of matter cause changes of state? State policy regarding land, mining, mineral extraction and its accompanying infrastructures and consumption of raw resources such as fresh water are all brought to bear on the political landscape.
Sonic reflections on volatile political and industrial times via field recordings from copper and lithium mining areas northern Chile, cottage electronics, sampled media and radio, and voice. Live performance at esc medien kunst labor by Anna Friz, with sounds of public uprising in Chile shared by Rodrigo Ríos Zunino. First broadcast for Art’s Birthday 2020; rebroadcast on Radio Tsonami, Valparaíso for Chile’s 2020 election.
On the 100th anniversary of the first global entertainment broadcast, Radioee.net and online radio stations from across the world present Wireless, a 24-hr translingual radio broadcast about planetary wireless communication.
NRRF Bb Radio: The development of planetary radio practices and systems also brought the insight that Earth is continually bathed in radio signals emanating from points across the universe, from ‘nearby’ within our solar system or from vast distances in space and time. Departing from Velimir Khlebnikov’s poetic observation in 1920 that “even starlight is a wireless signal”, the NRRF collective eavesdrops on the radiophony coming our way, and encounters fast radio bursts, long waves, and even the loneliest wave of all.
NRRF is an intermittent collaborative effort to make unlicensed neighborhood radio art. Earlier projects include a series of clandestine FM broadcasts in Chicago, Montréal and beyond with a rotating group of collaborators. Since 2012 NRRF features Jonny Farrow, Anna Friz, Stephen Germana, Jeff Kolar, and Peter Speer. It’s live radio expanded and improvised from various geographical locations, with the current group collaborating from Vermont, Florida, North Carolina, Chicago and Santa Cruz. The core group of performers play everything from traditional instruments to home built electronics, sample wildly, speculate broadly, and have been known to sing. @JonnyFarrow, @peter.speer, @jeffkolar, @wave_farm, @free103point9, @wgxc
On August 27, 1920, “The crazy people on the roof” (Radio Argentina
Society initiators Enrique Susini, César Guerrico, Miguel Mugica, Luis
Romero and Ignacio Gómez) installed a smuggled Marconi transmitter on
the rooftop terrace of the Teatro Coliseo in downtown Buenos Aires. This
broadcast of Wagner’s “Parsifal” marked the first radio broadcast in
Argentina and the first mass public entertainment broadcast in the
world.
On August 27, 2020, Midnight to Midnight Argentina Time, Wireless explores radio pasts and futures, from technology to entertainment. Everything wireless runs on radio, radio waves are the medium of wireless internet. Through translingual dialogue, music and sound, Wireless will consider the various modalities of this evolving planetary condition–spectrum, networks, telecommunications, infrastructure, urban acrobatics, physics, entertainment and education. Each partner radio will rebroadcast the marathon stream, leading to an amplification of radio investigation, entertainment, and solidarity.
radioee.net is an online, nomadic, multilingual radio station. They host 24-hr broadcast events on mobility and movement. They take up topics of transportation, migration, and climate transformation, transmitting local voices, music, and sound to create an audio portrait of a place in time.
Live Broadcast on π-node (Paris and Mulhouse, France on DAB), Resonance Extra (Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, London and Norwich, UK on DAB), Sound Arts (Dartington, UK on FM), and WGXC (Green and Columbia counties, New York on FM), Radio Tsonami (Valparaíso, CL online); Thursdays at 19:00-20:00 GMT (0). Rebroadcast on FM by Radio ARA, Luxembourg, Jet FM, Nantes, France, Radio Orange in Vienna, Austria and Radio Panik in Bruxelles, Belgium. One-off rebroadcasts on Radio Corax, Halle (Saale) Germany and others.
Worker-artists convene a hive broadcast of indiscriminately gathered sound-pollen, transmitting codified messages to kindred folk.
Each week a potent gang of sound artists are at play, exploring whatever is on their minds. Style guide: Anything goes
Each node streams live to Mobile Radio while listening to the complete live stream that goes out to our broadcast partners. Due to inevitable online delays of 10-20 seconds, all participant artists are hearing a delayed version of the group mix as they play together, effectively improvising with an as-yet unheard future.
April 16, 2020: Episode 2: “Oil and Vinegar”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Katharina Bihler &Stefan Scheib,(Saarbrücken), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf),DinahBird (Paris), dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), and Ralf Schreiber (Cologne).
April 23, 2020: Episode 3: “Wormhole Variations”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), Katharina Bihler &Stefan Scheib(Saarbrücken), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf), DinahBird (Paris), dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), and Ralf Schreiber (Cologne)
April 30, 2020:Episode 4: “Transcendental Trepidation”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), Katharina Bihler &Stefan Scheib(Saarbrücken), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf), DinahBird (Paris), dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), and Ralf Schreiber (Cologne)
May 7, 2020: Episode 5: “Mission Compossible”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), Katharina Bihler &Stefan Scheib(Saarbrücken), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf), DinahBird (Paris), dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), and Ralf Schreiber (Cologne)
May 14, 2020: Episode 6: “Weltschmerz Heimat”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), Katharina Bihler & Stefan Scheib(Saarbrücken), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf), DinahBird (Paris), dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), and Ralf Schreiber (Cologne)
May 21, 2020: Episode 7: “300 Trillion Times Less Dense”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), Katharina Bihler & Stefan Scheib(Saarbrücken), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf), DinahBird (Paris), dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), and Ralf Schreiber (Cologne)
May 28, 2020: Episode 8: “We Got Der Funk”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), Katharina Bihler & Stefan Scheib(Saarbrücken), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf), DinahBird (Paris), dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), and Ralf Schreiber (Cologne)
June 4, 2020: Episode 9: “Rhapsody in Why?”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), Katharina Bihler & Stefan Scheib(Saarbrücken), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf), DinahBird (Paris), dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), and Ralf Schreiber (Cologne)
June 11, 2020: Episode 10: “Stand Down Racist”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), Katharina Bihler & Stefan Scheib(Saarbrücken), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf), DinahBird (Paris), dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), and Ralf Schreiber (Cologne)
June 18, 2020: Episode 11: “Fast Radio Bursts”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), Katharina Bihler & Stefan Scheib(Saarbrücken), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf), DinahBird (Paris), dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), and Ralf Schreiber (Cologne)
June 25, 2020: Episode 12: “Last Wave Standing”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), Katharina Bihler & Stefan Scheib(Saarbrücken), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf), DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult (Paris), dieb13 (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), Lloyd Dunn (Prague), Lucinda Guy (Buckfastleigh).
July 2, 2020: Episode 13: “Indivisible i”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), Frauke Berg (Düsseldorf), DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult (Paris), dieb13 (Vienna), Anna Friz (Santa Cruz), Ralf Schreiber (Cologne), Lloyd Dunn (Prague), Lucinda Guy (Buckfastleigh), Hannes Hölzl (Andrian).
July 9, 2020: Episode 14: “More Bows Less Arrows”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), DinahBird (Paris), dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Lloyd Dunn (Prague), Anna Friz (Vancouver), Ralf Schreiber (Cologne), Rodrigo Ríos Zunino (Valparaíso). Special guest Nástio Mosquito.
July 16, 2020: Episode 15: “Close-Flung”; artists Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington (Ürzig), Xentos Fray Bentos (Broughton), DinahBird (Paris), Katharina Bihler & Stefan Scheib(Saarbrücken),dieb13 & Billy Roisz (Vienna), Lloyd Dunn (Prague), Anna Friz (Vancouver), Ralf Schreiber (Cologne), Rodrigo Ríos Zunino (Valparaíso).
Here’s the video from my set for the ongoing Quarantine Concerts hosted by the Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago on April 1, 2020. Curated by Sam Clapp, all the sets that evening were responding to the theme of “Inattention”.
My setup involved 4 FM transmitters, radios, micro-cassette, and small electronics. Also some live Monterey Bay radio world, including the nautical weather report.
I’ll be joining the Experimental Sound Studio’s Quarantine Concert series line up on Wednesday April 1, 2020 (not a joke, a true event!). Tune in starting at 20:00 CDT (Chicago time, GMT -5, or PDT GMT -7 on the Pacific west coast). I’ll be on at 21:00, playing a 30 minute solo set.
The evening is curated by Sam Clapp, and features Erica Gressman, Norman Long, me, and Matt Test + Stephan Moore.
All donations from my set go to support ESS: support the survival of independent art and culture, especially now!
Premiering a new installation work created together with Rodrigo Ríos Zunino: Salar: Evaporation is a multi-channel video and sound work based on recent fieldwork in the Atacama desert.
On view this weekend during the opening festivities of the Graz Kulturjahr, at esc medien kunst labor here in Graz, Austria; the installation continues from February 4-21, 2020 Tues-Fri 14h-19h.
esc medien kunst labor, Bürgergasse 5, 8010 Graz Austria
A significant portion of the world’s lithium is mined in the Salar de Atacama, the salt flats of the high altitude desert in northern Chile. This desert was once the bottom of a sea and still consists of rare geologic and organic systems, though now it is aggressively mined for the ingredients for batteries used in smart phones and electric cars. Salar: Evaporation seeks to de-totalize industrial extractivism in favour of manifesting many worlds from the perspective of temporality, land, and space. This multi-channel video and sound installation takes an experimental rather than purely documentary approach, challenging the deadly hubris of human exploitation in the desert by working with the forces characteristic of the desert itself, such as mirage, perceptual distortion, and the long duration of the geologic present.
The work reflects on landscape, infrastructure, and environmental change, exploring the micro and macro scales of human intervention and activity in relatively remote areas which occupy the space between urban sprawl and wilderness, and investigates the role of people (and artists) as agents in the myth-making and storytelling process which bring critique and create counter-narratives to those of progress and growth that propel unsustainable extractivist corporate and state-sponsored industries. Particularly at this contemporary moment, where the people of Chile are engaged in widespread national resistance and protest to business as usual by the state and corporate forces that have ravaged the country and environment while propagating gross economic and social inequities, such areas of resource extraction like the Atacama desert can hardly be understood as peripheral or as neutral sites of industry. Instead, they are centers of power, exploited to feed the forces of global capital to the benefit of a global elite. The future technological ‘smart’ cities will actually function as the peripheral expressions of this power which is being pillaged from the desert. Instead, we consider how the desert produces power in the form of unique and fragile ecosystems and geological expressions of time, from which we may learn and imagine alternative worlds.
This project is part of a larger series of works based on my research and fieldwork in the Atacama desert in Chile entitled We Build Ruins, and was made possible with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Hellman Fellowship, the Arts Research Institute of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Committee on Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
It’s that time of year, when once again we reach into deep pre-history to celebrate Art’s Birthday. It’s been 1,000,057 years to be precise, since someone dropped a sponge into a bucket of water, and so, art was born. Buiding on Robert Filliou’s Fluxus holiday, a loose and changing cooperation of international artists join in networked exchange locally and around the world. Tune in to the hub of activities.
I’m currently in Graz, Austria, hosted by the inimitable esc medien kunst labor . Tonight we are kicking off the year of the urban cyborg with a Cyborg Radiation Day. I’ll be performing a new piece entitled Changes of State, using field recordings from the Atacama desert, together with protest sounds shared by my collaborator Rodrigo Ríos Zunino from the recent popular uprisings in Chile in response to aggravated social and economic inequality.
While the Chilean uprising was sparked by a hike in public transportation prices, the real issue lies in a massive inequity between social welfare and corporate welfare, where Chile’s extraction economy serves the very wealthy while pillaging the environment and forcing more and more people to fall into poverty. International companies and consortia are deeply implicated in this mess, with Canadian mining companies and investors at the helm. Our ongoing project on mining and its associated infrastructure in the high altitude deserts of Chile is the focus of my time here in Graz, both for Art’s Birthday and with the multi-screen and multi-channel sound installation Salar: Evaporation which will open next week on January 24, 2020 at esc.
Tune in via Radio Helsinki , the free radio here in Graz, and here’s the full line up for tonight from esc!
18.00 Uhr:URBAN CYBORGS, Opening and greeting words by Reni Hofmüller and Ilse Weber, presentation of the project URBAN CYBORGS and start of radio transmission including Radio Cyborg TransmitterRCT
21.15 Uhr:The sound of artspace, Seppo Gründler live in Graz, then: Presents to art, Onlinearchive Ö1 Kunstradio, Moderation: Reni Hofmüller
21.40 Uhr:Changes of State, Anna Friz, Radioperformance, live from Graz
22.00 Uhr:Die Loslösung des Plans, Lale Rodgarkia-Dara, live from Graz
22.30 Uhr:Embodied Radio Device, Absolute Value of Noise and Anna Friz
22.50 Uhr: 30 Minutes of SDR, Enrique Tomas, live from Linz, in collaboration with Dorf TV Linz
23.20 Uhr: denn jede Variable stellt eine konstante Form dar, Adina Camhy, Bettina Landl & Peter Venus; Presents to art, Onlinearchive RADIA, Moderation: Reni Hofmüller
