June 25th, 2016
Clock Tower, Radio Towers, Signal Structures
The clock tower in the Rote Turm, Halle (Saale), Germany.
Site of my upcoming installation “The Envelope of the Hour”, Radio Revolten, October 2016.
The summer solstice has just passed here in the northern hemisphere, so pale evenings abound. This year I’ll be sticking close to the west coast, and preparing for autumn transmissions.
First up, I’m finishing a little piece for the Radio Studies conference Transnational Radio Encounters, in Utrecht, Netherlands from July 5-7, 2016. I’m not able to attend in person, so I’ve sent a little Nocturne in my stead, a short podcost for the late night listening comfort (or dis-ease) of conference attendees, about signal infrastructures and experiencing distance. Featuring distant listening outpost XRRB.
Together with Toronto-based collective Public Studio we are finishing up our commissioned public art work 120 Mirrors, to be unveiled this summer in the new Lee-Lifeson Arts Park in North York, Greater Toronto Area. The piece involves 3 different sculptural parts including submarine-inspired speaking tubes, and a collection of horns modeled on hearing trumpets and megaphones which can be manipulated to acoustically amplify the surrounding sound space or amplify one’s own voice.
I’m also working on a commission entitled How to Pack a Whale for the second edition of Radiophrenia, a temporary radio art festival and station broadcasting on-air, online, and on-site from August 29- September 11, 2016 from the Glasgow Center for Contemporary Arts. Subject matter still under great secrecy–but I can reveal that it involves dreams about packing.
Most of all, I’m preparing for the sprawling Radio Revolten International Festival of Radio Art which will take place in Halle (Saale) Germany from October 1-30, 2016. I’m one of five co-curators, together with Knut Aufermann and Sarah Washington of Mobile Radio, Ralf Wendt of Radio Corax, and Elisabeth Zimmermann of Kunstradio Austria. My area of concern is the contemporary transmission art exhibition entitled Das Grosse Rauschen: The Metamorphosis of Radio, which will feature artists from all over the world considering transmission ecologies, and re-framing radio and other forms of wireless communication. We are also hosting more than 60 artists to perform, install, engage in public actions and radio activity as well as hosting a symposium entitled Radio Space is the Place (with nods to both Sun Ra and Robert Adrian X), and running a round-the-clock city-wide radio art station.
In addition to curating at Radio Revolten, I’ll be presenting a new work there funded by the Arts Research Institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz, entitled The Envelope of the Hour. This piece reflects on time obedience and standardization, as measured by the public clock tower and the broadcast atomic clock on shortwave radio channels internationally. Towers of power, recuperated into instruments.
Signing off for now… until next time, stay detuned….
