KUNSTRADIO : A SAMPLER OF RECENT CANADIAN RADIO ART
CURATED BY Anna Friz
BROADCASTING Kunstradio, Austria
LISTEN : http://www.kunstradio.at/2011A/21_08_11en.html
Focus on Canadian radio art in summer 2011, Kunstradio invited the artist Anna Friz to compile an overview of new productions and projects. This is what she has come up with:
A Sampler of Recent Canadian Radio Art
“It would be foolish to try to make many definitive statements about contemporary Canadian radio art, but it is fair to say that most radio art in Canada happens on independent or improvised airwaves. Public radio offers few corners for unfettered artistic expression, but a healthy campus/community radio sector (meaning: independent, not-for-profit, listener-supported, volunteer programmed radio) allows for all sorts of shenanigans in the studio, late at night or in the middle of the day.
Independent stations in Montreal, Kingston, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and other cities are regular participants in Art’s Birthday and the Eternal Network, often partnering with artist-run centres, and provide fertile ground for experiments by emerging and established artists alike. Artists have been pulling radio out of the studio and into more intimate venues as well, using small circuits and transmitters to occupy the airwaves however temporarily.
Most of the artists in this program have spent significant time in independent radio stations making interesting sounds (with the exception of s*, who has only recently arrived on the planet, but who was drawn down to Earth during a meteorite shower when it was mesmerized by the forward scatter of radio signals). Two of the works were created live on air, while the others are deeply informed by radiophony as bodily experience, or as metaphor. Electricity is channelled as transmissions banal and transcendent are sought; bodies are encountered, voices resound.”
(Anna Friz)