Radia Show 1002: "Sasayaki o kiitekudasai" by Vittoria Assembri (Usmaradio)

Vittoria Assembri is an experimental sound artist and independent researcher in sonic arts and public architecture. Her sound research is about field recording, sound objects, and experimental music that reflect on the theme of marginal and liminal territory, in close relationship with urban plans and its crossing (human and non-human). Her practice develops from site-specific deep listening, focusing on urban dynamics, sociocultural processes and public sphere, with which to rewrite an affective and political landscape of resistance.

Vittoria is currently in Japan since the beginning of May, where she is doing a live performance tour and working on a few artistic residencies’ projects (Kyoto Kinugasa Art Residence for Community in Kyoto, Aomori Contemporary Art Center, Lake Haruna Artist Residence).

This track is a cut-up of her analog and digital recordings around Japan: Haruna and Fuji-san volcanoes, Kinugasa district in Kyoto, tatami’s and bonsai’s artisans in Okayama, izakayas in Shinjuku-Tokyo, Taka-san cellist, nightingale flooring of the Ryōn-ji Temple, shishi odoshi, radio fm-am interferences, jingles and alerts from megaphone loudspeaker, Aomori forest’s fauna, memorial songs from inhabitants and fishermen of the Haruna cadera, etc.

Each week one member of the Radia Network produces a show for all the others. The Radia Network emerged from a series of meetings, clandestine events, late-night club discussions, and a lot of email exchanges between cultural radio producers across Europe. The topics vary and the reasons for forming a network are many, but Radia has become a concrete manifestation of the desire to use radio as an art form. The approaches differ, as do the local contexts; from commissioned radio art works to struggles for frequencies to copyright concerns, all the radios share the goal of an audio space where something different can happen. That different is also a form in the making – radio sounds different in each city, on each frequency. Taking radio as an art form, claiming that space for creative production in the mediascape and cracking apart the notion of radio is what Radia does.

It is producing radio stuff that is hard to describe. Some of it can be labeled radio art, or experimental radio, or creative radio. Sometimes it talks, sometimes it doesn’t. It can be noisy, or a kind of soundscape, or a documentary, a document, a talk, a performance. Each and every week, one of the partners will provide the network program, commissioned and produced especially for this purpose: being broadcast by all the partners and made available online.

Some things have to be said about all those partners. They are radio stations, of the independent, non-commercial, community, cultural species. They all speak different languages, and this should create interesting problems. Although initially they were all European radio stations this has changed over time and Radia has become not only larger but also more diverse: 17 partners in nine countries and growing all the time.

Radia Stations

* Campus Paris (Paris, FR)
* CFRC 101.9 FM (Kingston, CA)
* CKUT (Montréal, CA)
* JET FM (Nantes, FR)
* Kanal 103 (Skopje, MK)
* Orange 94.0 (Vienna, AT)
* Radio Campus (Brussels, BE)
* Radio Corax (Halle, DE)
* Radio Grenouille (Marseille, FR)
* Radio Helsinki (Graz, AT)
* Radio Nova (Oslo, NO)
* Radio One 91 FM (Dunedin, NZ)
* Radio Panik (Brussels, BE)
* Radio Papesse (Firenze, IT)
* Radio Student (Ljubljana, SI)
* radio x (Frankfurt/Main, DE)
* Rádio Zero (Lisboa, PT)
* RadioWORM (Rotterdam, NL)
* Reboot.fm (Berlin, DE)
* Resonance FM (London, UK)
* Soundart Radio (Dartington, UK)
* TEA FM (Zaragoza, ES)
* Wave Farm WGXC 90.7-FM (New York, USA)
* XL Air (Brussels, BE)

Affiliates

* Kunstradio (Vienna, AT)

More information at http://radia.fm