WGXC-90.7 FM
Radia: "Floating Field Research" by Gabi Schaffner (radio x)
90.7-FM in NY's Upper Hudson Valley and wgxc.org/listen everywhere
http://www.wgxc.org/
"Floating Field Research" by Gabi Schaffner. Image by Gabi Schaffner (2025). (Jun 05, 2025)
Produced by a different "Radia" station each week.
Radia Show 1053: FLOATING FIELD RESEARCH by GABI SCHAFFNER (radio x)
FLOATING FIELD RESEARCH
in two pieces by GABI SCHAFFNER
The first piece is
Kukka Shop Overdrive (2021)
The location: A small kiosk selling flowers and eggs, next to a heavily trafficked road on the island of Lajasalo in Helsinki. The shop has been in the neighborhood for the last 20 years I was told, but egg sales occur only on Wednesdays. They are sold in trays by 40 pieces only. The weather was gritty, slush and gravel spurted from the cars in the road and form the overall backdrop of the ‘kukka’ shop conversations.
The recordings: All recordings originate either from the site of the ‘kukka’ shop at Lajasalo and another flower shop in Mäntta – and finally a private greenhouse in Taiwan.
Additional sounds derive from the frying of several eggs and a visit to a chicken shack in Ruovesi to collect more eggs.
Credits for Kukka Shop Overdrive (2021)
Field Recordings and composition: Gabi Schaffner.
Voice Taiwan: Margaret Shiu, Bamboo Curtain Studio, Taipei.
Chicken: Tyyra Jukka, Ruovesi.
The second piece is
Schweben | Floating (2023)
“Schweben” is an invitation to immerse you in a series of short narratives about body musings. The narratives have been collected on the legendary art ship MS Stubnitz, located at Hamburg harbour.
“Schweben” takes ‘float(ing)’ literally: Guests, passers-by and members of the Stubnitz staff were asked about their experiences in floating or hovering in the air…
Other bodies of water and air whirl alongside, from vitamin tablets to ship ventilators.
The piano belongs to the MS Stubnitz. We listen to it in an improvisation played by the crew’s cook, Renard.
Credits for Schweben | Floating (2023)
Stimmen/Voices: Claudia, H.W., Karim, Jann, L., Mathias, Tina.
Piano: Renard.
Fieldrecordings: Gabi Schaffner.
Other: “Ein Zimmer voller Sterne”, Schaffner, 2020.
GABI SCHAFFNER
Gabi Schaffner works as an interdisciplinary sound artist and curator. Her artistic practice is determined by the methods of poetic ethnography in connection with fluxus-like mise-en-scènes, radio-making, and sound art performances. Much of her work originates from journeys. Next to her radiophonic productions, Schaffner creates speculative musical genres and inserts them into music history in order to raise awareness for cultural, gender-related, and/or geographical conditions. Schaffner has been realising award-winning productions with Deutschlandfunk Kultur, radia.fm, Hessian Cultural Radio, and ABC Australia. Since 2012 she maintains DATSCHA RADIO, a nomadic transmission project that links the medium of radio to current ecological issues.
Find out more about DATSCHA RADIO at www.datscharadio.de
and about GABI SCHAFFNERs projects in a broader perspective at www.schaffnerin.net
credits:
great many thanks to GABI SCHAFFNER for FLOATING FIELD RESEARCH … and we also say thank you to her artistic collaborators, contributors and donators – especially to Augustin the cat!
metadata:
FLOATING FIELD RESEARCH by GABI SCHAFFNER
radia production: miss.gunst [GUNST + radiator x]
production date: may 2025
station: radio x, frankfurt am main (germany)
length: 28 min.
licence: (cc-by-nc-nd) GABI SCHAFFNER
additional info:
includes radia jingles (in/out), station and program info/intro (english)
links:
radio x & radiator x: www.radiox.de
GUNSTradio & radiator x: www.gunst.info
Gabi Schaffner: www.datscharadio.de – www.schaffnerin.net
radia art radio network: radia.fm
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: 22 partners in 14 countries and growing all the time.
Radia Stations
* Duuu (Paris, FR)
* ∏node (Mulhouse, Paris, FR)
* Diffusion (Sydney, AU)
* JET FM (Nantes, FR)
* Kanal 103 (Skopje, MK)
* Orange 94.0 (Vienna, AT)
* Radio Campus (Brussels, BE)
* Radio Grenouille (Marseille, FR)
* Radio Helsinki (Graz, AT)
* 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)
* Usmaradio (San Marino, SM)
* Wave Farm WGXC 90.7-FM (New York, USA)
Affiliates
* Kunstradio (Vienna, AT)
* Mobile Radio (Ürzig, DE)
* Radioart106 (Haifa, PS48)
More information at http://radia.fm
Playlist:
- Sunken / Monad
- ASMR - Sleep In A Lighthouse / BeauBelleGosse