WGXC-90.7 FM

The Radio Art Hour: 31 Down, Anna Friz

Sep 16, 2023: 3pm - 4pm
WGXC 90.7-FM: Radio for Open Ears

90.7-FM in NY's Upper Hudson Valley and wgxc.org/listen everywhere
http://www.wgxc.org/

Standing Wave Radio

wavefarm.org/listen and 1620-AM at Wave Farm
https://audio.wavefarm.org/transmissionarts.mp3

Produced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellows and Wave Farm Staff.

This week tune in works from 31 Down and Anna Friz. 31 Down creates darkly themed, romantic performance work with an emphasis on sound design, imagery, and mood. The works consist of live performances, installations, live networked performances and streaming works. Ryan Holsopple, founder and Artistic Director, develops and programs interactive systems to create and control the performances. Here, their "Naomi, Hotel Room" is featured. Then Canadian radio artist, now based in California, Anna Friz is featured, with the 2023 work "Revenant." It is made in two parts, exploring mortality, rot, and regeneration, using electronic and radiophonic instruments, and sound from below and above ground.

1: Outside
In the increasing heat and haze of summer, the days are long and hot and the nights insomniac. After brief, fitful sleep, the sun is a tarnished penny in the morning when it rises behind an orange haze of smoke and ash from wildfire. Stuck indoors when the air is hot and thick, other creatures find their way inside to take refuge with me: coming in along the plumbing, up the drains, in the vents and down the chimney, through the cracks under the door or the walls. Unexpected insects, worms and a lizard that dry on the floor, various arachnids running up the walls, a small bird, a bat. It seems I must change my approach to cohabitation: when the creatures move into my nest, I trade places and take to the airwaves or escape down into their burrows.

2: Revenir
The difference between the living and the dead is hard to discern. That which is dry and buried may not lie still, but move, resurface, rehydrate, transform. The dead gone to ground may yet pay visitations, or am I the visitor? Time underground enables metamorphosis of body and senses.

The work was recorded in the mighty RP4 studios of the ORF Funkhaus in Vienna and on various locations in Santa Cruz, California. Thanks to Martin Leitner, Elisabeth Zimmermann, and Indexical.

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, Jess Speer, Andy Stuhll, José Alejandro Rivera, Tyler Maxin, and Iru Ekpunobi. 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.

Playlist:
  • Waterfront Skyline / MAD Knocks
  • The Deal / Karelian Surnames