As Wave Farm’s Community Engagement Radio Art Fellow, Celeste Oram will conduct the workshop TERRA RADIA: the (De-)Territorialization of the Radio Spectrum. Presented in three parts, the workshop gathers radio enthusiasts to reflect on the territorialization of the electromagnetic spectrum: that is, the conceptual, legal, political, scientific, and aesthetic frames whereby radio is described as if it were space or territory. The workshop will pose and discuss questions including: But how apt are those analogies? What do they elide or misrepresent about radio properties and technology? What political mechanisms do they naturalize? By what other conceptual means might we navigate and manage electromagnetic properties?

And what is at stake in these reflections? Well, the spectrum is a proving ground for some of the most urgent political re-calibrations of our time: the rights and privileges of corporate bodies; the future of the nation-state; Indigenous sovereignty and decolonial governance; overlapping sovereignties within shared territorial environments.

Presented in a hybrid format, an introductory experimental lecture-recital will be followed by collaborative Zoom sessions open to an international audience of radionauts and anyone who wants to learn about the political underpinnings of how we apprehend natural phenomena.

Celeste Oram is a composer with equal investments in radiophonic and transmission art, as well as live musical performance in the experimental and classical realms. Oram’s work explores the histories and micro-cultures of musical practice itself, as well as its socio-political entanglements. Her radiophonic pieces employ radio technologies (sometimes DIY) as a musical instrument in the pursuit of richly contrapuntal sonic textures. Often Oram’s work engages with the histories and cultures of both public and amateur radio, and their entwined development with colonialism and nation-building—especially in her home country Aotearoa New Zealand. Recent compositions for live performance span instrumental and vocal concert music, polyphonic songs, music for period Baroque instruments, experimental music-theatre, and orchestral music for dance-theater. Much of Oram’s musical language is rooted in a studied investment in early music, revivifying historical musical languages via experimental approaches.

Calling all radionauts, wave artists, transmission enthusiasts, and utopists!

This participatory workshop (conducted via Zoom) introduces you to the realm of spectrum management: the overlapping forces of law, politics, economics & technology that shape the landscape of the electromagnetic spectrum, and thereby the lives of the citizens within it. Up and down the electromagnetic field, we communicate, express our selves, and forge relationships. Our very personhood is therefore bound up in our access to spectrum and its regulation.

For 125+ years, the sheer immaterial strangeness of the radio spectrum has mounted challenge after challenge to the “commonsense” around which our world is ordered: property, territory, the greater good. For, at heart, what *is* spectrum? Is it an invisible continent? common utility? precious natural resource? transcendent ether? Each analogy naturalizes certain ideas about how spectrum can and ought to be used. But our language misleads us.

Together, workshop “articipants” will form a citizens’ assembly of sorts, deliberating these themes. We take in a global view, considering not only the regulatory environment in the US, but also Indigenous legal challenges to spectrum auctions in Aotearoa New Zealand & Turtle Island, grassroots spectrum autonomy in Latin America, and the claims to spectrum by its more-than-human users. We’ll experiment with language and listening to renovate our understanding of spectrum and recover its strangeness. As citizens of spectrum, we will negotiate a “radio treaty” (a ‘treaty’ being, in essence, a score) that professes what rights—and mutual obligations—we might claim to guide our radioventures. Across these prompts, articipants will have the option to submit personal reflections and creative responses to be included in a collaborative radioplay.

Now as ever, the spectrum is a proving ground for some of the most urgent political re-calibrations of our time: the rights and powers of corporate bodies, the nature of the democratic nation-state, Indigenous sovereignty and decolonial governance, overlapping sovereignties within shared territorial environments. In deliberating together over the radio spectrum, may we also find a way to walk together on the earth.

Please register to secure your spot and receive perusal materials in advance of the workshop (though this preparation is not a strict prerequisite for attendance; come as you are).

REGISTER HERE!

Celeste Oram is a composer with equal investments in radiophonic and transmission art, as well as live musical performance in the experimental and classical realms. Oram’s work explores the histories and micro-cultures of musical practice itself, as well as its socio-political entanglements. Her radiophonic pieces employ radio technologies (sometimes DIY) as a musical instrument in the pursuit of richly contrapuntal sonic textures. Often Oram’s work engages with the histories and cultures of both public and amateur radio, and their entwined development with colonialism and nation-building—especially in her home country Aotearoa New Zealand. Recent compositions for live performance span instrumental and vocal concert music, polyphonic songs, music for period Baroque instruments, experimental music-theatre, and orchestral music for dance-theater. Much of Oram’s musical language is rooted in a studied investment in early music, revivifying historical musical languages via experimental approaches. https://celesteoram.com/

Calling all radionauts, wave artists, transmission enthusiasts, and utopists!

This participatory workshop (conducted via Zoom) introduces you to the realm of spectrum management: the overlapping forces of law, politics, economics & technology that shape the landscape of the electromagnetic spectrum, and thereby the lives of the citizens within it. Up and down the electromagnetic field, we communicate, express our selves, and forge relationships. Our very personhood is therefore bound up in our access to spectrum and its regulation.

For 125+ years, the sheer immaterial strangeness of the radio spectrum has mounted challenge after challenge to the “commonsense” around which our world is ordered: property, territory, the greater good. For, at heart, what *is* spectrum? Is it an invisible continent? common utility? precious natural resource? transcendent ether? Each analogy naturalizes certain ideas about how spectrum can and ought to be used. But our language misleads us.

Together, workshop “articipants” will form a citizens’ assembly of sorts, deliberating these themes. We take in a global view, considering not only the regulatory environment in the US, but also Indigenous legal challenges to spectrum auctions in Aotearoa New Zealand & Turtle Island, grassroots spectrum autonomy in Latin America, and the claims to spectrum by its more-than-human users. We’ll experiment with language and listening to renovate our understanding of spectrum and recover its strangeness. As citizens of spectrum, we will negotiate a “radio treaty” (a ‘treaty’ being, in essence, a score) that professes what rights—and mutual obligations—we might claim to guide our radioventures. Across these prompts, articipants will have the option to submit personal reflections and creative responses to be included in a collaborative radioplay.

Now as ever, the spectrum is a proving ground for some of the most urgent political re-calibrations of our time: the rights and powers of corporate bodies, the nature of the democratic nation-state, Indigenous sovereignty and decolonial governance, overlapping sovereignties within shared territorial environments. In deliberating together over the radio spectrum, may we also find a way to walk together on the earth.

Please register to secure your spot and receive perusal materials in advance of the workshop (though this preparation is not a strict prerequisite for attendance; come as you are).

REGISTER HERE!

Celeste Oram is a composer with equal investments in radiophonic and transmission art, as well as live musical performance in the experimental and classical realms. Oram’s work explores the histories and micro-cultures of musical practice itself, as well as its socio-political entanglements. Her radiophonic pieces employ radio technologies (sometimes DIY) as a musical instrument in the pursuit of richly contrapuntal sonic textures. Often Oram’s work engages with the histories and cultures of both public and amateur radio, and their entwined development with colonialism and nation-building—especially in her home country Aotearoa New Zealand. Recent compositions for live performance span instrumental and vocal concert music, polyphonic songs, music for period Baroque instruments, experimental music-theatre, and orchestral music for dance-theater. Much of Oram’s musical language is rooted in a studied investment in early music, revivifying historical musical languages via experimental approaches. https://celesteoram.com/

Ansible Realm Connector is an innovative live docu-fictional radio play and Arkestral tele-performance that unfolds the narrative of the (fictional) inter-dimensional ansible, I.D.A., and the genesis of the (real) ANANSI Revolutionary Collective. Envisioned as a global collaboration, musicians, sound artists, and writers will synchronize from diverse locations using low-latency audio transfer technology. This interdisciplinary telematic performance aims to transcend physical distances, creating a shared experience for a global audience. SUNJIR0 will anchor the project on-site at Wave Farm while connected with artists in Nairobi, Kenya and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

ANANSI Revolutionary Collective is a Pan-African group of artists distributed throughout the world that collaborate with each other on art and work. We co-steward a commons, follow the ANANSI philosophy, experiment with collaborative practices, and are building a participatory governance model. We are artists, activists, anarchists, inventors, economists, guerrilla theorists, creatives, creators, and collaborators. We are distributed throughout the globe and step with ease between the many worlds we inhabit.

SUNJIR0 is a trans-disciplinary artist, designer, creative technologist, and the catalyst of the ANANSI Revolutionary Collective. As a solo audio artist, they create immersive soundscapes and docu-fictional work that exists in the realm of science-fiction, Afrofuturism, and techno-politics.

Ansible Realm Connector

Ansible Realm Connector is an innovative live docu-fictional radio play and Arkestral tele-performance that unfolds the narrative of the (fictional) inter-dimensional ansible, I.D.A., and the genesis of the (real) ANANSI Revolutionary Collective. Envisioned as a global collaboration, musicians, sound artists, and writers will synchronize from diverse locations using low-latency audio transfer technology. This interdisciplinary telematic performance aims to transcend physical distances, creating a shared experience for a global audience. SUNJIR0 will anchor the project on-site at Wave Farm while connected with artists in Nairobi, Kenya and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Three Transmissions from a Carceral State is a live performance and radio broadcast bringing together three sound archives connected to the history of imprisonment in Upstate New York. The first set of recordings derives from a practice of listening to the electromagnetic and acoustic environments of active and decommissioned prisons in Wave Farm’s vicinity. The second set draws on Wave Farm’s archive of radio programs highlighting the analysis of imprisoned people, their families, and communities. Finally, a third set of recordings engage with current abolitionist organizing in Upstate New York. The three sound archives will be mixed in real time to evoke the prison as a physical structure and a discursive site. Listening to its past, present, and future, the project seeks to contribute to the abolitionist imagining of imprisonment’s afterlife.

Hans Kuzmich is a Belarusian interdisciplinary artist and scholar whose work attends to gender as an interface between subjects and the state with the desire to unsettle their regulatory logics. Working from a trans, diasporic position, Kuzmich creates moving image and sound installations that foreground phenomena on the edges of visibility and audibility, such as infrared light and electromagnetic fields. Kuzmich is currently completing a hybrid doctoral dissertation in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, a BFA from the Cooper Union, and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program. Kuzmich has been awarded artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Studios at MASS MoCA, and SOMA Summer. His work has been exhibited at Art in General, the Kitchen, the 8th Floor, Poetry Project at St. Marks Church, Performance Project at University Settlement, Temporary Agency, and Not An Alternative/No-Space (New York, NY); Underground Museum, New Wight Gallery, and Pacific Design Center (Los Angeles, CA); AS220 (Providence, RI); Beirut (Cairo, Egypt); and SOMA (Mexico City), among other venues. Kuzmich’s writing has appeared in journals (Theory, Culture & Society, Art Journal, and Native Strategies) and exhibition catalogs (Imagine Freedom: Art Works for Abolition, New Wight Biennial: Compassion Fatigue, and Sharon Hayes: There’s So Much I Want to Say to You).

Three Transmissions from a Carceral State

Three Transmissions from a Carceral State is a live performance and radio broadcast bringing together three sound archives connected to the history of imprisonment in Upstate New York. The first set of recordings derives from a practice of listening to the electromagnetic and acoustic environments of active and decommissioned prisons in Wave Farm’s vicinity. The second set draws on Wave Farm’s archive of radio programs highlighting the analysis of imprisoned people, their families, and communities. Finally, a third set of recordings engage with contemporary abolitionists organizing in Upstate New York. The three sound archives will be mixed in real time to evoke the prison as a physical structure and a discursive site. Listening to its past, present, and future, the project seeks to contribute to the abolitionist imagining of imprisonment’s afterlife.