Radio Papesse

Emerging from a collaborative project seeking the development of new short works of radio art within the far flung breadth of New Zealand’s artistic communities and networks, this program compiles some of the submissions to an open call for works (all under 7min) by Auckland based sound art organisation The Audio Foundation, in collaboration with the programme Artbank on independent radio station bFM, Auckland, and radia partner Radio One 91FM, in Dunedin.

The original call asked for submissions which, in a reflection of the aims of the radia network, “need not adhere to any specific theme, however preference will be given to works which attend to the various histories of radio, or engage it as a medium for artistic creation/presentation.” the works subsequently chosen for inclusion in this ‘radio art compilation’ display such aims via a generous diversity of approaches, genres, proclivities and obsessions, but all arguably share a singular focus, as well as a finely honed understanding of radio as a specific form, medium or set of conditions.

After individual works’ initial appearances as part of the programming of Artbank, the curated compilation of works which make up this programme for radia was first broadcast as a discrete, unannounced programme on the evening of Wednesday 3 August 2016, by Sam Longmore over the airwaves of the Audio Foundation radio station AFM, located at the Audio Foundation’s premises in the old Parisian tie factory in central Auckland. this programme was intercepted and recorded by Sally Ann McIntyre in a domestic room in Dunedin, and the recording was then ‘packaged’ as the radia show you are about to listen to. this relay down the length of New Zealand added an extra dimension to the work by causing it to pick up extra sounds related to its roaming, and extra sonic materiality, while traversing the geographical distance and the particular transmitting and receiving sites / rooms between participating NZ partners. maybe this extra information / degradation can be considered as a form of ‘transmission artefact’, via a transmitting / receiving / re-recording process enacted on the local level before the show heads to various parts of the world to become a programme for the multiple stations that comprise the radia network, with all their varied geographic locales, and associated sets of cultural contexts & conditions. which is another way of saying that both noise and signal are equally important in this listening experience: while we are quite far away from many of you, in New Zealand, the radio can paradoxically bring us together, while at the same time emphasising the untranslatability of distance.

Playlist:
00.00 – 03.36: A Patch of Nettles  One Stoch 4 at 950m
03.20 – 04.28: Bernard Clarke  It’s Not True I Had Nothing On, I had the Radio On
04.19 – 06.21: Brittany Covich  Samples from Yes-ter-day
06.15 – 11.16: Celeste Oram  Vera Wyse Munro’
10.44 – 16.19: Daniel Beban  Big Ben Tape Improvisation #1
16.19 – 17.19: Lefa Wilson  A Small Lineage, Devo List, Family
17.19 – 22.22: Mark Williams 1956, Taking Sips, Singers, Buck Clayton, A Trombone on Drums, Inferno, Sorry
22.20 – 25.50: Paul Timings AMAF
24.40 – 28.25: Susanne Kahlich Caesura