Radia Show 1104: "The Game," by D A Calf (Radio One 91FM, NZ)

The Game takes its name from the attempts made by asylum-seekers to reach the EU via the overland border between Bosnia and Croatia. Located on the so-called Western Balkan migrant route—and only 10 kilometres from the border—Bihać has for the last 15 years been used as a point from which to attempt ‘the game’. Visible from the nearby monument on Garavice Hill is the local cemetery which contains a small, unkempt plot of graves of many who did not succeed—either drowning in the Una river after jumping off the trainline which snakes along beside it, encountering bears or unexploded land mines from the 90’s wars, or as a result of injuries sustained by the brutal push-backs administered by the Croatian border police. The monument, symbolising twelve weeping mothers looking out over their fallen children from the National War of Liberation (WWII), now takes on new meaning.

Additionally, the title references the local football stadium which at the height of the migrant crisis was used as a makeshift refuge for asylum-seekers. In contrast to the rising authoritarianism in Europe at present which manifests as increasingly harsh immigration policies, Bihać was the first region liberated from Nazi-allied forces in WWII. It was here that the founding principles of Yugoslavia, including its anti-colonial engagement with the global south were first fleshed out, guided by the Partisan call-to-arms ‘Smrt fašizmu, sloboda narodu’ (Death to fascism, freedom to the people).

The composition unfolds over nine thematic chapters (five of which feature in this excerpt), each focusing on one part of the constellational matrix of sites related to Garavice. The composition progresses through abandoned spaces used as makeshift asylum-seeker accommodation, game day at the local football stadium, the fields around Garavice, a border crossing, and archives related to the site, concluding at the point at which a group of asylum-seekers prepare to make a covert, nighttime border crossing. Interludes highlight the geological settings of these locations, while at other points field notes appear in the form of voice over, ruminating on the listening process.

The Game was first exhibited as a 60-minute, 22-channel sound installation incorporating geological and found objects activated by exciters and reclaimed speaker components, in Naarm/Melbourne in February 2026.

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Bio
D A Calf is a Naarm/Melbourne-based sound and installation artist and researcher, working predominantly with sound, text and photography to explore the remnants and dormant possibilities of failed modernisms. Through field work and archival research his practice contends with archives—impossible, hidden, contested, and otherwise—of place.

https://www.dacalf.com

https://www.instagram.com/d_a_calf

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Each week one member of the Radia Network produces a show for all the others. The Radia Network emerged from a series of meetings, clandestine events, late-night club discussions, and a lot of email exchanges between cultural radio producers across Europe. The topics vary and the reasons for forming a network are many, but Radia has become a concrete manifestation of the desire to use radio as an art form. The approaches differ, as do the local contexts; from commissioned radio art works to struggles for frequencies to copyright concerns, all the radios share the goal of an audio space where something different can happen. That different is also a form in the making––radio sounds different in each city, on each frequency. Taking radio as an art form, claiming that space for creative production in the mediascape and cracking apart the notion of radio, is what Radia does.

It is producing radio stuff that is hard to describe. Some of it can be labeled radio art, or experimental radio, or creative radio. Sometimes it talks, sometimes it doesn’t. It can be noisy, or a kind of soundscape, or a documentary, a document, a talk, a performance. Each and every week, one of the partners will provide the network program, commissioned and produced especially for this purpose: being broadcast by all the partners and made available online.

Some things have to be said about all those partners. They are radio stations, of the independent, non-commercial, community, cultural species. They all speak different languages, and this should create interesting problems. Although initially they were all European radio stations this has changed over time, and Radia has become not only larger but also more diverse: 22 partners in 14 countries and growing all the time.

Radia Stations

* Duuu (Paris, FR)
* ∏node (Mulhouse, Paris, FR)
* Diffusion (Sydney, AU)
* JET FM (Nantes, FR)
* Kanal 103 (Skopje, MK)
* Orange 94.0 (Vienna, AT)
* Radio Campus (Brussels, BE)
* Radio Grenouille (Marseille, FR)
* Radio Helsinki (Graz, AT)
* Radio One 91 FM (Dunedin, NZ)
* Radio Panik (Brussels, BE)
* Radio Papesse (Firenze, IT)
* Radio Student (Ljubljana, SI)
* radio x (Frankfurt/Main, DE)
* Rádio Zero (Lisboa, PT)
* RadioWORM (Rotterdam, NL)
* Reboot.fm (Berlin, DE)
* Resonance FM (London, UK)
* Soundart Radio (Dartington, UK)
* TEA FM (Zaragoza, ES)
* Usmaradio (San Marino, SM)
* Wave Farm WGXC 90.7-FM (New York, USA)

Affiliates

* Kunstradio (Vienna, AT)
* Mobile Radio (Ürzig, DE)
* Rádio Zero (Lisboa, PT)
* Radioart106 (Haifa, PS48)

Syndicated By

* Campus Paris (Paris, FR)
* Harrogate Community Radio (North Yorkshire, UK)
* KZradio (Tel Aviv, IL)
* Noise Radio (Zwolle, NL)
* Radio ARA (Luxembourg, LU)

More information at http://radia.fm