Welcome to "The Radio Art Hour," a show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio. "The Radio Art Hour" draws from the Wave Farm Broadcast Radio Art Archive, an online resource that aims to identify, coalesce, and celebrate historical and contemporary international radio artworks made by artists around the world, created specifically for terrestrial AM/FM broadcast, whether it be via commercial, public, community, or independent transmission. Come on a journey with us as radio artists explore broadcast radio space through poetic resuscitations and playful celebrations/subversions of the complex relationship between senders and receivers in this hour of radio about radio as an art form. "The Radio Art Hour" features introductions from Philip Grant and Tom Roe, and from Wave Farm Radio Art Fellows Karen Werner, Andy Stuhl, Jess Speer, and Jos Alejandro Rivera. The Conet Project's recordings of numbers radio stations serve as interstitial sounds. Go to wavefarm.org for more information about "The Radio Art Hour" and Wave Farm's Radio Art Archive.
Two works this week from the New American Radio archives. Melody Sumner Carnahan with Laetitia Sonami and Marie Goyette contribute "Manananggal" and Diamanda Galas adds "Schrei 27." Carnahan's story is about two powerful women who come under each other's influence, thereby releasing unconscious contents. Each begins to see the other as evil, bringing to life a type of vampire "a woman who can cut her body in half"the once-metaphorical beast known in Philippine folklore as "the manananggal." During the unraveling of their history, the two women again draw close, the leitmotif of each is firmly underscored as she projects onto the other woman emotions and elemental forces she has repressed in herself. Originally commissioned for stage by STEIM in Amsterdam. Commissioned by New American Radio. Then, Diamanda Galas and her "Schrei 27." It consists of several short performances over the space of twenty-seven minutes alternating extreme high-energy vocal work with absolute silence. The performances are chapters of a confession which might have been induced through a chemical or mechanical manipulation of the brain. There is a high density of speech-sound over time which is often machine-like in its velocity. The work employs the atypical speech and vocal signal processing that Galas has been researching since 1979. A co-commission of the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and New American Radio.
Wave Farm is a non-profit arts organization driven by experimentation with broadcast media and the airwaves. A pioneer of the Transmission Arts genre, Wave Farm programs provide access to transmission technologies and support artists and organizations that engage with media as an art form. Major activities include the Wave Farm Artist Residency Program; Transmission Art Archive; WGXC 90.7-FM: Radio for Open Ears, a creative community radio station based in New Yorks Upper Hudson Valley; a Fiscal Sponsorship program; and the Media Arts Assistance Fund in partnership with NYSCA Electronic Media/Film. EVERGREEN EPISODE 127.
Diamanda Galás, Melody Sumner Carnahan, Laetitia Sonami, Marie Goyette
A show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio.
00:57:21
1
July 6, 2023
Produced for Wave Farm in the Hudson Valley in New York.