WGXC-90.7 FM
The Radio Art Hour: AWU Radio, Nabalayo, Misty Avinger, Kui Dong
90.7-FM in NY's Upper Hudson Valley and wgxc.org/listen everywhere
http://www.wgxc.org/
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.
This week "Trans-Temporal Echoes" by AWU Radio; "Focus on Yourself" by Nabalayo; "As Seen on TV" by Misty Avinger; and "Flying Apples" by Kui Dong are featured. In her guidebook, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, queer black feminist love evangelist and self described marine mammal apprentice Alexis pauline gumbs asks: "How can we listen across species, across extinction, across harm? How does echolocation, the practice many marine mammals use to navigate the world through bouncing sounds, change our understandings of 'vision' and visionary action? Is social media already a technology of bounce, of throwing something out there and seeing what comes back?" Created by AWU Radio, a feminist radio station based in Senegal, Trans-Temporal Echoes is a technology of bounce, in the words of Alexis Pauline Gumbs. It is an ensemble of voices, a deep, dear dialogue between women and whales echoing each other. Telling stories of the deep, deep tones, deep time, deep entanglements, and deep trans-generational transmission. Then, the phrase ‘Focus on yourself’ begins almost every refrain of Nairobi-based griot, Nabalayo’s poem and public service announcement. Never addressed to any particular listener, or maybe addressed to all who need to hear it, the transmission is intended to address the undeniable link of misogyny and colonialism within the Kenyan context. "Focus on yourself and question your thirst for blood. Is it symbolic revenge? For what they did to you? to us?," Nabalayo asks. "Kenya is growing, but its women are suffering at the hands of misogyny, and complacency to misogyny," the artist writes.- Introduced by Wave Farm Radio Art Fellow 2023, Iru Ekpunobi. Next, in "As Seen on TV," Audio Producer and sonic storyteller Misty Avinger imagines a ‘Build-a-Dad’ workshop, choose-your-own-adventure radio piece, that accompanies the artist’s inner monologue as they flip through a catalog of Television Dads. Through a game-show medium, our host both grieves and offers reflection on fractured relationships with parental figures, and transmits the whimsical places imagination can take us through the radio. - Introduced by Wave Farm Radio Art Fellow 2023, Iru Ekpunobi. Finally, Kui Dong's "Flying Apples" is an algorithmic composition that takes the listener into the colorful, playful, and fantastic realm of an unfinished childhood dream. Programmed in Small-talk language, using extremely nested patterns based on a repeated three-note motive, the work was completed on newly developed software operating on a Mac workstation at the Computer Center of Research in Music and Acoustic, Stanford University.
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:
- Djourou / Ballaké Sissoko
- Sounds of the Ocean / Nerd Tha Fool
- Swampmarsh / People Legend
- Corazón del Mar / Little Whale
- Jizingatie / Nabalayo
- Sneaky Adventure / Kevin MacLeod
- Low Rider / War
- Your Angel (Live) / Slavinsky Coyle
- Flower Girl / Nobody Important
- Dark Beginnings / Rich Supreme