Wave Farm is delighted to announce that Jess Speer (Asheville, NC) will serve as the 2020/2021 Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellowship. During her engagement, September 2020 - May 2021, Speer will make weekly additions to the Wave Farm Broadcast Radio Art Archive, an online resource and a broadcast series on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM. She will also create original radio artworks for broadcast, and conduct workshops and listening sessions with WGXC programmers and interested members of the public.

Jess Speer is an artist, radio DJ, librarian, teacher, and mother living in Asheville, NC. As a librarian and artist, she explores questions about permanence, presence, history, mindfulness, mortality, and access to information and ideas. Speer has collected over 800 records, many of which include sound effects, field recordings, spoken word and documentary works, and mines this collection for both broadcast and live performances. By collecting records and making field recordings, she attempts to create an archive of sorts, to gather time, history and experience together. Performing with them, over broadcast and in live events, brings that history to life and shares it, while also embodying the ephemerality that’s at the heart of history, truth, nature, and human beings. She is the host of the weekly radio show (and sometimes performance) Ecstatic Listening on WSFM-LP AshevilleFM. More at jessicaspeer.info.

We are constantly surrounded by waves, vibrations, transmissions, traveling invisibly through and around us and carrying messages: information, 24-hour news feeds, talk shows, rock shows, data streams, conspiracy theories, sad songs, bad songs, operating systems, all of them whizzing around us. How many bummer vibes have passed through your home today, even without being picked up by a receiver?

You are invited to be part of a counter-spell.

The Radio Witch Moon Hotline is accepting messages for the moon to be broadcast on the Full Moon each month on WGXC 90.7 FM in Acra, NY and streaming online at wavefarm.org. Dial 518-302-6067 and leave your message for the moon.

In 2021 Wave Farm's WGXC 90.7-FM celebrates 10 years of creative, adventurous, experimental, community radio for open ears on the Upper Hudson Valley's FM dial. Join us for a series of celebratory events on-air and in-person throughout the year:

February 26, 2021, 7 - 9:00 p.m.: Anniversary Broadcast: WGXC Awards
WGXC 90.7-FM, wavefarm.org/listen
Ten years ago, at 2 p.m. on February 26, 2011, with mere minutes to spare, WGXC powered on, transmitting 3,300 watts out to the Upper Hudson Valley on 90.7-FM. A large boisterous group assembled at the Catskill Community Center to celebrate. There, WGXC's first programmers took to the mic to introduce their shows and perform live on-air as part of the first ever WGXC broadcast. Join us ten years later for a very special ceremonious broadcast in honor of this official 10th Anniversary day.

April 23 - May 7, 2021: Wave Farm Incident Report Dispatch 001
Incident Report, 348 Warren Street Hudson, NY 12534
F.T. Marinetti & Pino Masnata's La radia Futurist Manifesto of October, 1933 (Published in "Gazzetta del Popolo,") is on view along with a 10th Anniversary print designed by Mayuko Fujino.

April 24, 2021 Noon - April 25, 2021 Noon: DRONE AT HOME
Video livestream on Twitch / Basilica Website (Noon – 10 p.m. EDT)
24-hour audio livestream on Wave Farm’s Standing Wave Radio (Noon – Noon EDT) | LISTEN HERE
FM Radio Broadcast on WGXC 90.7-FM in NY’s Upper Hudson Valley (Noon – 6 a.m. EDT) | SCHEDULE HERE
For the past 7 years, 24-HOUR DRONE presented with Le Guess Who? has kicked Basilica Hudson’s season into bloom as a sacred wake-up call for the building in her winter hibernation. With all large gatherings still on hold due to COVID-19, this year we will bring DRONE to the airwaves in collaboration with Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM Radio for Open Ears.
Both organizations, Basilica and Wave Farm, will each invite five sound artists to contribute a 60-minute performance. Assembled, this newly commissioned 10-hour drone program will be the featured content for DRONE AT HOME 2021. Highlights from past 24-HOUR DRONE event archives will flesh out the rest of the 24-hour online broadcast.

May 26, 2021, 7:30 - 11:00 p.m.: WGXC 10th Anniversary Drive-in Event!
Greenville Drive-In 10700 New York Highway 32, Greenville, NY 12083.
Tickets at wavefarm.simpletix.com

Let's celebrate WGXC's 10th Anniversary together at the Greenville Drive-in! We're planning this event to scale as needed in terms of where we are with physical gathering. Either way, we think it will be an epic exploration of the number 10! Wear your most festive attire and bring your favorite radio for the LoveShack photo and recording booth. Most importantly come ready to celebrate.

Schedule:

• 7:30 p.m.: Arrival
• 7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.: Get your portrait taken by Bryan Zimmerman, record Station IDs and sweet nothings at the LoveShack with your concierges Donna and Honey of the Donna and Honey's Love Motel: A radio romance and rock and roll show, and interior by Becca Van K!
• 7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.: Get Your Concessions! (Cocktails at the bar, Snack Bar goodies available.)
• 9:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.: Program

1. LunarMoss (formerly of LunarMoss), a micro-meditation on time's most agreeable measurement: the decade; conveyed thru sound as catalyst and contingent summation of collective memory.
2. Jess Speer, Jess Speer will perform live with 10 sound sources, all celebrating WGXC, Wave Farm, and radio, with a special community-brewed Radio Witch full moon spell for the continued success of WGXC.
3. Jeff Economy (Snackpoint Charlie) and Alanna Medlock (There There), 10 Movements through Undiscovered Countries
4. Jen Kutler (Wave Farmacy) and Quintan Ana Wikswo, a work of 10 texts, 10 videos, and 10 variated sensor response.
5. Mayuko Fujino (Your Voice Touches My String), 10 tracks of single-stringed instruments, one string at a time
6. Anna Friz, 10-band Radio: Variations with one- and two- way radio, from deep inside the dial. Are there (still) little people who live inside your radio?
7. DJ Var (Friday Night Vibes Session), 10 years of happiness
8. Stephin Merritt (of the Magnetic Fields), 10 songs in 10 minutes
9. Rancho Thatchmo, Ruminations.
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10. Brian Dewan, WGXC filmstrip (2014/2021)

August 7, 2021, Audio Buffet 2021 and Programmer Picnic
WGXC 90.7-FM, wavefarm.org/listen
Wave Farm's sixth annual Audio Buffet and WGXC Programmer Picnic will take place on Saturday August 7, 2021. In 2015, Pauline Oliveros and IONE donated the 32-channel mixing board they once traveled the world with to Wave Farm. Their generous and meaningful donation serves as the fulcrum for the Audio Buffet event, where dozens of acoustic and electronic sound artists come together for a live collaborative and improvisational radio performance on Wave Farm's WGXC 90.7-FM from 2 - 4 p.m. The broadcast is followed by a WGXC Programmer Picnic.

Performing artists include: Jen Kutler, Quintan Ana Wikswo, electr(on)ic chakra, Craig Chin, Chris Funkhouser, Al Margolis, Senem Pirler, Jimmy Garver, Tom Roe, Lucas Brode, Jack Schoonover, PG Six, Mayuko Fujino, Paulus van Horne, Nathan Cervoni, Jeff Economy, Andrew Madey, and Adam Tinkle. More info.

October 23, 2021: John Cage’s Rozart Mix, realized by artist Aaron Dilloway
The John Cage Trust 1309 Annandale Road Red Hook, NY 12571
Newly realized by former Wave Farm Residency Artist Aaron Dilloway, the installation at the John Cage Trust will be an expansive, multi-level, visual, and sonic work, with collaborating tape players including Rosie Actor-Engel, Twig Harper, C. Lavender, Quintron, Robert Turman, and John Wiese. In keeping with Cage's score, a minimum of 88 tape loops will be employed. The tape loops will be made to run on 12 reel-to-reel decks positioned in various rooms and floors of the John Cage Trust building, winding up stairs and around furniture. Visitors will be immersed in a kinetic and audible drawing. As was the case in the first performance of Rozart Mix in 1965 at Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, the content on the tape loops will include field recordings as well as voices; however, in this new iteration the sound materials will be sourced from the over 100 volunteer programmers who contribute programming on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM. This event serves as a culminating celebration of WGXC's 10th Anniversary year. More information at wavefarm.org/rozartmix.

A big thank you to our 10th Anniversary Underwriters!

Image Note: Greenville Drive-in Photograph © Beth Schneck Photography

Habitat for Humanity is kicking off a new application cycle for the month of February! We partner with working people in our community to obtain an affordable mortgage and to move into a new home. Habitat is currently seeking individuals or families for two homes in Columbia County: one in Ancramdale (Pine Plains School District) and the other in New Lebanon (New Lebanon School District). Applications are being accepted through the end of February for both locations. Information is available at 518-828-0892 or at ColumbiaCountyHabitat.org.

Next up in Bridge Street Theatre’s ongoing 2021 Winter Dance Residency initiative is French-Vietnamese dance artist Mai Lê Hô’s LayeRhythm, which will be using its February 1 – 12 residency to develop a new piece called "Switch." On the final weekend of their time in Catskill, a free video excerpt of Section One (out of five) of this evening-length work-in-progress will be available to the public starting February 11 at 7:00pm on Bridge Street Theatre’s web site (BridgeStreetTheatre.org), Facebook page, and YouTube channel. Underwritten by Duke Dang and Charles Rosen, the entire Bridge Street Theatre Dance Residency initiative is dedicated to the memory of their friend and mentor Anh-Tuyet “AT” Nguyen. For more information, visit https://bridgest.org/bridge-street-dance-residencies/

Led by Wave Farm 2020/2021 Radio Art Fellow, Jess Speer, this workshop takes its focus from the 1992 radio artwork Redefining Democracy in America, Part 6: Leap of Faith by artist Jacki Apple, produced in collaboration with writer, poet, and performer Keith Antar Mason. Both were based in Los Angeles at the time, the radio work was made in the wake of the L.A. uprisings set off by the verdict in the Rodney King trial. Apple, a white woman raised in Manhattan, and Mason, a Black man raised in St. Louis, had a conversation about growing up on opposite sides of the American racial divide in the mid-20th century and placing the current events of that time in a larger historical and personal context. Almost 30 years later, the piece is as relevant now as it was then.

In the workshop, the group will listen to the piece closely and have a discussion about both its content, context, and form. Jacki Apple will visit the class to talk about making the piece, and answer questions. Participants will then either partner to work in small groups or work singly to create a radio art piece that responds to our experiences of history in our lifetimes, whether through music, poetry, interviews, radio play, or more abstract sound productions.

The Details

Contact info@wavefarm.org to register or ask questions.

WGXC's 10th Anniversary Pledge Drive, will run from Feb. 15 through Feb. 28, 2021. Help us kick off a year-long celebration, on-air and off, of creative community radio, as we continue to build a base of monthly sustaining donors. Growing a community of sustaining supporters is vital to the station’s longevity. Please join us as we celebrate a decade of broadcasts, with new shows, and the independent voices that continue to make WGXC-FM a groundbreaking and celebrated venue for radio as an artistic medium.

To make a recurring donation, or to make a one-time gift, visit: wgxc.org/donate or call 518-697-7400 and pledge your support of Creative Community Radio for Open Ears.