In this audio work, Shortwave Collective explore Citizens Band (CB) radio—a range of frequencies dedicated to license-free communication. As artists interested in the materiality of radio waves—bypassing corporate communications infrastructures and harnessing atmospheric conditions—we are drawn to CB’s potential as a shared mode of connection.

Yet while CB radio presents itself as an open community, our experiences have been marked by inaudibility and exclusion, with predominantly male voices dominating the band. We investigate the gendered and discriminatory codes embedded in CB slang and speak back through poetic interventions: No ‘go-go girls (on the dancefloor)’ rejects a CB code that equates women with livestock, originally used to describe a truck hauling pigs or cows.

Working from locations dispersed across the globe, we explore our local environments, magnetically mounting antenna extenders to metal surfaces in attempts to meet on an 11-metre wave. We hear distant communications as radio signals are reflected by Sporadic E layers of ionisation. These efforts to connect—across languages, locations, and atmospheric conditions—open speculative possibilities for a future collective CB radio community and shared poetic transmission.

This piece was developed during a tekhnē online residency supported by OUT.RA and Skaņu Mežs, between September 2025-January 2026. A companion text titled 'Becoming Citizens of the 11 Metre Band' is available via Skaņu Mežs. Bio Shortwave Collective is an international feminist artist group using the electromagnetic spectrum as artistic material. Shortwave Collective’s active members are Alyssa Moxley (FR), Brigitte Hart (AU/UK), Georgia Leigh-Münster (UK), Hannah Kemp-Welch (UK) and Maria Papadomanolaki (GR).