Our next live broadcast of OverFlow Radio will be October 9, 10, 11, 12 from Noon-6pm CST

Emily Johnson / Catalyst's project Overflow Radio is a performance, skill-share, planting of 1000 trees, and radio transmission taking place over 24 non-consecutive hours within a massive quilt installation and across geographies and territories. 

Overflow Radio emerges from Emily Johnson's practice of creating large-scale social choreographies and features complex contributions from Indigenous writers and scholars, performers, local community organizers, lo-fi radio wave artists, food futurists, and land rematriative activists. The project gathers in-person and over the radio in ways that transcend colonial borders, languages, and time; the project practices shared commitment, gathering what participants need to know, and creating possible futures, together. 

Overflow Radio is housed within 84 quilts that have been part of a decade-long community sewing project. Designed by textile artists Maggie Thompson, the quilts hold the collective volunteer effort of thousands, reflecting historic moments along with personal histories, migrations, and dreams. The quilts invite an articulation of the needs of the present. They are an archive, activated. 

Across the duration of 24 non-consecutive hours, performers and participants gather around radios, listening to live broadcasts of stories and text from twelve First Nations and Indigenous writers speaking to listeners from their home territories. Performers Emily Johnson, Brandi Norton, and Michelle Boulé dance an otherwise score meant to shift our perception of time. Local community organizers offer four skill-shares centered on: body, land, protection, and making, in possible forms of self-defense, seed saving, nervous system regulation, power-tool use, and radio building. Performers and participants eat together, nourishing themselves and community in partnership with leaders of local food justice efforts. Outside, over an extended period of time, Overflow Radio will plant and nurture 1000 trees, creating a constellatory support network and ongoing care resource. 

Starting in September 2026, Emily Johnson / Catalyst launches Overflow Radio Radio, a monthly four hour micro FM radio broadcast and digital stream that mirrors the essence of the live performance with the embodied themes: MAKING, BODY, LAND, PROTECTION. 

Working with the natural power of radio waves and guided by Radio Waves Producer Stina Thomas Hamlin, Overflow Radio Radio supports Indigenous artists, thinkers, and makers as the project's participants imagine and manifest how to live and build better futures. Overflow Radio Radio reminds us and our younger generations that radio is awesome and to lean into what we already know—the technologies, care systems, cycles, skills, speculative and physical practices we can teach one another. We listen. We build our collective power. We get to work in the overflow. 

Overflow Radio is a National Performance Network Creation & Development Fund Project commissioned by Roy and Edna Disney / CalArts Theater (REDCAT) and co-commissioned Diverse Works, MASS MoCA and University of Minnesota dance Program.

Overflow Radio is developed through creative residencies provided by MASS MoCA, Roy and Edna Disney / CalArts Theater, University of Minnesota's Imagine Fund with support from the McKnight Foundation and Danspace Project with support from the New York State DanceForce, a partnership of the New York State Council on the Arts. 

Overflow Radio is created with generous support from First Peoples Fund, Howard Gilman Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance and the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and The Mellon Foundation.

Overflow Radio's audio stream is possible through a partnership with Wave Farm.