WGXC-90.7 FM

From the Radio Art Archive: Works by Kate Donovan - "The Bespoke Headpiece" (2018) and "chorus duet for radio" (2016)

Mar 21, 2025: 7:30 pm - 8pm
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/

Produced by Wave Farm Radio.

"The Bespoke Headpiece" (2018) "The Bespoke Headpiece" is a radio myth; one that is imagined to date back millennia. The story has travelled orally through generations of those who have lived in locations where the Aurora Borealis reveals itself, and where some women could not only see the illuminated sky, but could also hear the phenomenon. As part of a coming of age ritual, girls would spend three nights alone with the Aurora night sky, wearing custom headdresses fashioned as receiving antennas, constructed of natural materials and designed to amplify the reception of sound. Folklore tells of this rite of passage, where reception was so acutely tuned that the young women alone in the night could hear voices of the deceased and the unborn. It is said that these voices provided guidance and support as the girls began their journey into adulthood.

"chorus duet for radio" (2016)
Kate Donovan’s radio art decenters us humans. She has an ongoing interest in elements and natural radio. Also noteworthy is her ideal listening situation for this piece: “It's supposed to be broadcast on microFM...amplified through multiple radios to an audience sitting on the floor in the (near)dark. My dream listener actually is listening at home alone in the dark, right before daybreak...!” Another of Kate Donovan’s recent pieces, Nightcall Radio, also has instructions for listening in the dark, and I have found that it’s worth following this instruction if you can. You can hear Kate Donovan’s radio show elements here: https://www.mixcloud.com/elements_with_kd/
- Described by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner.

The Wave Farm Broadcast Radio Art Archive is an online resource and broadcast series on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM, which is syndicated to stations across the country through The Radio Art Hour. It aims to identify, coalesce, and celebrate historical and contemporary international radio artworks created specifically for terrestrial AM/FM/Shortwave broadcast, whether it be via commercial, public, community, or pirate transmission. The archive is a product of Wave Farm's Radio Artist Fellowship.

Radio artists explore broadcast radio space through a richly polyphonous mix of practices, including poetic resuscitations of conventional radio drama, documentary, interview and news formats; found and field sound compositions reframed by broadcast; performative inhabitations/embodiments of radio’s inherent qualities, such as entropy, anonymity and interference; playful celebrations/subversions of the complex relationship between senders and receivers, and the potential feedback loops between hosts and layers of audience, from in-studio to listeners at home to callers-in; use of radio space to bridge widely dispersed voices (be they living or dead), subjects, environments and communities, or to migrate through them in ways that would not be possible in real time and space; electroacoustic compositions with sounds primarily derived from gathering, generating and remixing radiophonic sources. Note: Wave Farm continues to expand this definition of radio art through engagement with contemporary practices including those revealed by Wave Farm Artists-in-residence, and the Radio Art Fellowship program.

Playlist:
  • Akai Inazuma / Momoko Kikuchi
  • Walking On Pine Needles / Ambiance
  • Vete i vinden / Somna Tryggt
  • Front / Sameen Rauf
  • Twenty5Eight / D.O.P.E K.I.D
  • Strong Blowing Wind on the Coast / Zen Remastering I
  • FLOODEDMALL / THETHIRDEYE
  • Floresita en el Sol / The Red Leslies
  • Made for This (feat. Abiv) / Beleaf
  • Neighborhoods (Morning Crêpes) / Dominic Delore