Radio Play is an improvised recording of artist Elizabeth Flood tuning between three shortwave radios in her bedroom. The piece is meant to be a theatrical demonstration of radio as space, beginning with Flood in her bedroom and the listener in their space, but, the artist says, “as the edges of my room fall away and into the radio, we both meet in this third space, inside the radio."

Inspired by Christine Sun Kim's closer captions, the artist wrote closed captions for the piece, available here and below. - Described by Wave Farm Radio Art Fellow 2023, Lia Kohl.

Captions

Radio Play: Inside

Stage backdrop : My bedroom

Youre in a space.

I’m in a room. My room.
I’m walking away.
[I exit.]
You are in space.
Where are you?

CD on, you can hear things being played in the room. You hear the room.
[I enter. I return.]

Antennas pulled up, pulled out.
The music picks up, we are beginning.

Wake up.
More antennas come out.

Static, begins.

You must wake up.

Rumbles, voices.
Static wave.

Piano still present, but static blurring.

Movement.
Close to radio.

Radio in and out,
Body moves, in the room, spark flies. Zip.

Placement. Here. In this room. What room?
In and out, blurry space, static. In the radio.
Zip.
In the static, between a place and no place.
Haaaah, breath.
Between.
A breath of static, a hum.
Between.

Inhale, exhale.
Movement, far, zoom.
In the static,
Are we moving in the room (what room, my room?) or in space?
How do we return and stay and move?
A remembering of multiplicity, in space.

Far, close. Waves. Crashing.
What space are we swirling in?
What is there to hold on to?

A voice- a pitch- we are in a place with people. A remembering of space.
Where is the room?

Buttons pressed, close.

Pattern picked up, a kind of communication.
Ghostly space, occupying close.

Two rhythms, or one? Are they coming from the same place or are we meeting here?
Where are you? Here too.
What happens in the moments when we all collide?
When did we become we?
What happens in the space between?
What are you straining to hear?

Where is the space between my room and this third room we share, the room inside the radio, the radio room, this ghostly space?