WGXC-90.7 FM

From the Radio Art Archive: "A Garden in the Air: Datscha Radio" (2020) by Gabi Schaffner

Oct 27, 2025: 11am - 11:59 am
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.

"A Garden in the Air: Datscha Radio" is a radio sound collage was created by German radio artist Gabi Schaffner. Since 2012, Datscha Radio has been a nomadic and temporary radio station that Gabi Schaffner co-organizes with local participants wherever she may be. In Gabi Schaffner’s words, “Datscha Radio relies on the garden as a matrix and metaphor for organic growth, communication, and community...[T]he radio station travels to nearby and distant gardens, broadcast at exceptional or unusual times, and combines radio art with contemporary discourses on ecology, interstellar matter, listening and knowledge cultures.” A Garden in the Air: Datscha Radio is a radio sound collage of broadcasts from Datscha Radio Berlin, which Gabi Schaffner realized collaboratively with the radio makers and artists Kate Donovan, Niki Matita and Helen Thein. This piece was produced in 2020 for Kunstradio in Vienna.
- Introduced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner.

Credits: Excepts from: Jingles, Proben and Mixes: 2012, 2014 Michaela Schimun, Ulrike Stoehring, „Datscha Owl“ by Sarah Washington 2012; Nightgardening III: Gabi Schaffner, Niki Matita; Datscha Radio Taiwan, 2019: Catherine Lee, Yi-Chun Liu, Mabel Wang and Ming-Chun Cheng; Datscha Radio Madrid, 2018: KTA Martin, Romi Casile, Alberto Garcia. Eva Kurly. Radio art pieces (in order of appearance): Babosa, Niki Matita 2019; Seeds, Kate Donovan (with Scout, Molly und Hunter from her garden) 2019; Greenhouse Emissions: Kate Donovan and Ryan McFadyen 2017, Gymnospermium Pills, Gabi Schaffner, 2019, Voice: Kate Donovan Surprise Insert: Riesenkolibri. Frieder Butzmann at Datscha Radio 2017 Choir: The Nightingale by Thomas Wheeler, sung by the Berliner Chor Singlust e.V. under the direction and by courtesy of Andrea Eckhard. Datscha Radio Nightgardening I, “The night of the Nightingales“ 2019 Supporting musicians: Hannes Wienert, Mimosa Pale, FX Schroeder Composition and additional field recordings: Gabi Schaffner 2020.

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:
  • Rubberband Man (single version) / The Spinners
  • The Russian Nightingale / Mimi Coertse
  • Big Dipper / Half Waif