Radio is Back! Kill your ipod!

Breaching the airwaves with a new breed of sound: Transmitting from two studios in the former east and west parts of the city, a new radio project marks the crossings of many cultural communities for the next three months. Herbstradio is a continuation of an ongoing international experiment: how to map the complex patterns of urban culture’s producti vity and transport it into the ether? While other cities around the world have permanent “free cultural radios”, Berlin has only realized this in temporary forms. Partly, Herbstradio is a tribute to Berlin’s potential to realize a permanent cultural channel like Resonancefm London; WFMU, NYC; Grenouille, Marseilles; Tilos Radio Budapest; Orange, Vienna and Corax, Halle or the former Radio100, Berlin.

Herbstradio proposes to better promote all the cultures of a city which make it vivid and livable but are mostly excluded from the media sphere, living in the “long tail” of interim residues of micro-local and digital niches. A large portion of the population in Berlin is not part of the mainstream and probably never will be: with a migration background, as temporary cultural workers, or in permanent underground exile, they create different cultural spaces. Cosmopolitan diversity is a given condition which drives and inspires cultural institutions and events as well as everyday life. Local and far away stories and sounds stand for themselves but also blend and mix while radio opens up a shared timespace right in your car, office or kitchen.

Cultural production after the global crisis of capital needs to find its place between the offerings of the creative industry and your friendly facebook friends. Money probably isn’t the only means to measure productivity these days. A low budget project can still filter a considerable amount of interesting cultural data for you. Watching the music industry change, one can sense an uncertain future where distribution is free and incomes are low. Herbstradio operates on the assumption of a universal flatrate model, where everything is available but choice needs effort. The isolated ipod user is overwhelmed with the task of permanently reorganizing individual playlists, while free cultural radio offers a social context where relevance can emerge from locality and surprising moments of commonality.

New forms of collective subjectivity production are needed which connect the physical plane of living together in a locality with the abstract sphere of social data on the internet. How to organize the unorganizable? How much information you want to digest has to do with your capability of how long you can stay up to go clubbing. Then again, how many interesting lectures did you miss? For those who cannot be at the same place at the same time, radio offers a way to include people and extend the social range of a niche. While the globe goes digital, the local analogue strikes back. radio is the new vinyl.

You can travel through a city like you can consume a website. Herbstradio allows you to dig a little deeper. It will capture more than just a glimpse of events, discourses or musical styles without trying to be journalistic, objective or representative. This is rather a part of the fabrics which hold the city together and drive it, to develop the electromagnetic senses which connect it to the past and future. Check out the podcast and livestream or tune in to the FM broadcast.

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Program: http://www.1010.co.uk/org/breakthrough.html

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As part of the Beyond Multiculturalism? conference at the House of World Cultures, Hausradio’s Pit Schultz hosted a discussion with DJ Ipek Reboot.fm/Multicult 2.0, Berlin, Stephan Galland/Radio Grenouille, Marseille and Stefan Tenner/Radio Corax, Halle. The subjects covered contemporary music, cultures and diverse communities from the perspectives of free radio, cultural radio and dj radio with a very clear result: Radio has an important role in the everyday cultural life of a city.

Tune in for a dynamic discussion about how radio is driven by its listeners, producers and communities and how these forces recombine to create a new space of potential communication via the ether. Tackling diversity on all levels, the guests illustrate where radio refuses to reduce people to ethnic difference. Pop music, gender, politics, art and theory are the tools of the trade. Convivality is the name of the game.

http://www.hkw.de/hausradio
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The afternoon seminar at The Building and in its garden will offer a selection of short, partly performed lectures mostly by the authors of the reader forming a multi faceted picture of Stadium’s de terioration, its bizarre existence as a ‘city within a city’ and the artists interventions. The architectural and topographic situation of the Building in Berlin – as the detached house with a plot of green lawn – will play a major role in the construction of the event – with a live radio broadcast by backyardradio a with N’Pieces by Etienne Noiseau, Radio Tale by Fran Ilich and the botanical exhibition curated by Sebastian Cichocki.

Stadium X – A Place That Never Was – a Reader

Edited by Joanna Warsza. Contributing authors Claire Bishop, Sebastian Cichocki Benjamin Cope, Ewa Majewska, Pascal Nicolas-Le Strat, Warren Niesłuchowski, Marek Ostrowski, Grzegorz Piątek, Cezary Polak, Anda Rottenberg, Roland Schöny, Pit Schultz, Tomasz Stawiszyński, Stach Szabłowski, Ngô Van Tuong. Photos Mikołaj Długosz, Marta Pruska, Marta Orlik. Copy edited by Ha!art and Bęc Zmiana Foundation

Organized by: The Building, the Laura Palmer Foundation and the Bęc Zmiana Foundation.
Partners: The Polish Institut Berlin, Ha!art publishing house, Pro QM Berlin & backyardradio Berlin.

This event was possible thanks to the generous support of The German-Polish Foundation.

these pieces are definitely winter pieces composed in cold and dark Marseille that was slowly fading out to Berlinat first, there was a listening experience while using an earphone apparatus in the engaged cityi stopped moving, started to listen backwards to the past ~ but not that backwards ~ and then made a step forwards into the blank and empty shape of a self~portrait as an artistevery piece stands on its own and sounds like a part of the same story though it only exists to balance or even cancel anotherat the end you will forget everything but there is no end, there are more pieces, elsewhere, to be foundthe whole thing is still submitted to digestion

By Etienne Noiseau  (Images by Marie Betbèze) www.beaubruit.net

A www.backyardradio.de Commission.

http://audiopoverty.de/

http://otolithgroup.org/

http://www.hyperdub.com/

http://audiopoverty.de/

http://www.uncarved.org/

http://www.woofahmag.com/

With an exemplaric de-construction of one of the most successful and repeatedly covered tunes in Eurodance, Heinrich “DJ Officer, Officer” Dubel und Paul “Paulator” Paulun reveal certain psycho-social potentials about the often despised genre.

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By DJ Officer Officer & Paulator

For broadcast on Radia.fm partner radios across Europe. Check the radia website for broadcast times near you. www.radia.fm

A www.backyardradio.de Commission.

http://www.slum-tv.info/
http://techformance.blogspot.com/

Produced by Backyard Radio for Deep North Transmediale 09 Festival for art and digital culture. Hosted by Knut Aufermann, Pedro Lopes, Diana McCarty, Pit Schultz and Sarah Washington.

Now the artist is venturing to the limits of his present capacity of commitment. However it is still possible to ask him for more.

By Etienne Noiseau (Images by Marie Betbèze)

www.beaubruit.net

A www.backyardradio.de Commission.

Studio guests Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji discuss the relationships between the Coltan Wars, telephony and Congolese communities in London with their project (realized with Richard Wright) the Tantalum Memorial. The discussion revolves around art and politics and the ways and means of critical engagement, as well as describe the technology involved in the system. The Tantalum Memorial won the Transmediale Award 2009 at the Deep North Festival!

Andi Studer joined the discussion to speak about electronic music and the future of sound of free. Studer discussed the net.audio festival and how labels can work with new models of distribution.

Produced by Backyard Radio for Deep North Transmediale 09 Festival for art and digital culture. Hosted by Knut Aufermann, Pedro Lopes, Diana McCarty, Pit Schultz and Sarah Washington, with simultaneous broadcasts on radiozero Lisbon, Resonance 104.4 Fm London and Soundart Radio, Totnes.

Celebrating the Award!