WGXC-90.7 FM

The Radio Art Hour: Mwangi Hutter, Modest Mouse

Jul 17, 2021: 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 Bianca Biberaj, in collaboration with Wave Farm Radio Art Fellows and Artists-in-residence.

What Touches Us Most is by Mwangi Hutter, an artist duo based in both Berlin and Nairobi producing work under the combination of their surnames and biographies. They describe their combined identity “as a creative strategy to resist fixed notions of identity based upon gender, race, and cultural backgrounds.... Their works can be seen as a vision of unification and the pacification of contrasts: female-male, African-European, black-white and the borders separating you and me.” Mwangi Hutter produced What Touches Us Most in 2017 –the piece was commissioned and broadcast as part of Documenta, the German contemporary art exhibition that takes place every 5 years. Documenta 2017 was unique in its showcasing of radio art including seventeen commissions of new radio art works broadcast in partnership with local radio stations in Greece, Cameroon, Colombia, Lebanon, Indonesia, the United States, and Germany, creating a worldwide exhibition on air. Here is Documenta’s description of the piece: “What Touches Us Most brings together many of the vocal characters, soundscapes, and acoustic themes developed by Mwangi Hutter over the past two decades. Earlier sounds and characters speak of wildness and isolation, experiences arising from a dualistic splitting of the self and the Other. A babble of voices resounds, intent on humorous discussion. Newer themes convey an atmosphere of yearning and rapture. The piece renders audible the spaces of memory and expression, moving from the past into the future. It is an invitation to wander through these indefinite locations, awakening an awareness of the possibility of going beyond difference to express oneness.” Plus, tune in Modest Mouse's "Transmitting/Receiving" from their 2021 album "The Golden Casket."

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 and Jess Speer. 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.