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Radio is a technology that gives order to chaos. Ask someone on the street, “what is radio?”, and they’re likely to describe the commercial spectrum – in which narrow bandwidths are leased and policed with bureaucratic rigour. But this commonplace experience of radio forgets the century of electrical engineering that has enabled such precise manipulation of so enigmatic a force of physics. The cultural institution of radio also gives order to chaos. Public broadcasting is a technology which domesticates drastic geopolitics into mundane family life. Perhaps this kind of radio’s greatest feat of engineering is attenuating global forces of the 20thC into little dramas played out on kitchen-counter stages. Varpcast is a radio show presented by musicians Ensemble Adapter (Reykjavík, Berlin), Celeste Oram (Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland) and Keir GoGwilt (Edinburgh, Manhattan). It scavenges the public broadcasting archives of island nations - especially Aotearoa/New Zealand and Iceland - and talks back to this archive, and to the global 20th century, from the supposed periphery of islands. As these island stories oscillate between geopolitics and anecdotes, the zany and the heartfelt, they offer much to considerations of the future, and the search for personal & political self-determination in a globally indebted world. Because everywhere is far away from somewhere – yet no man, nor nation, is an island. Devised & performed by Celeste Oram, Ensemble Adapter & Keir GoGwilt Recorded at Figure8 Studios, Brooklyn NY Engineered & mixed by Lily Wen