Started in April 2005, the Radia network is an international informal network of
community radio stations
Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting. Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of interest. They broadcast content that is popular ...
that have a common interest in producing and sharing
art works for the
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
. In 2020, the network gathers 24 radio stations from 23 cities across 17 countries, speaking 10 different languages. It also organizes linked-up events and special
broadcasts
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began wi ...
. Radia intends to be a space of reflection about today's
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
and
radio art
Radio art is an aural art form made with sound. Artists use radio technology (i.e. radio transmission, airwaves) to communicate artistic compositions for interpretation – exposing their audience to alternate means to experiencing their art thro ...
. Its activities try to contribute to intercultural exchange and artworks' and artists' circulation.
The network's name freely refers to ''La Radia'', a
Futurist
Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...
manifesto written by
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (; 22 December 1876 – 2 December 1944) was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist, and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye d ...
and Pino Masnata in 1933. The network's founders dropped the ''La'' to distance themselves from the Futurists' political views. As it stands alone, "radia" is simply "radio" or "radios" in some languages.
Shows
The Radia Network's basis is a weekly 28 minutes
show broadcast by all the stations. Each station produces the show in turns. Every round of shows is called a ''season''.
Content
As stated in their
jingle
A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. Jingles are a form of sound branding. A jingle contains one or more hooks and meaning that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually t ...
, Radia is "bringing new and forgotten ways of making radio to
heir
Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Officiall ...
listeners. Each week
hey
Hey or Hey! may refer to:
Music
* Hey (band), a Polish rock band
Albums
* ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014
* ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the title song, 1980
* ''Hey!'' (Jullie album) or the title s ...
give artists the challenge to make radio that works all across Europe and beyond." The Radia show intends to cross boundaries and address people of different languages and cultures. It usually explores the different genres of
radio art
Radio art is an aural art form made with sound. Artists use radio technology (i.e. radio transmission, airwaves) to communicate artistic compositions for interpretation – exposing their audience to alternate means to experiencing their art thro ...
, separately or by mixing them:
sound art
Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound art ...
,
electroacoustic music
Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instrumen ...
,
sound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literacy and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound poetr ...
,
radio drama
Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine ...
,
soundscape
A soundscape is the acoustic environment as perceived by humans, in context. The term was originally coined by Michael Southworth, and popularised by R. Murray Schafer. There is a varied history of the use of soundscape depending on discipline, r ...
.
Production
Usually each member radio station commissions an artist from their local artistic community and gives him/her
carte blanche
A blank cheque in the literal sense is a cheque that has no monetary value written in, but is already signed. In the figurative sense, it is used to describe a situation in which an agreement has been made that is open-ended or vague, and therefo ...
for producing a show. In that sense, Radia uses radio as a
gallery
Gallery or The Gallery may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Art gallery
** Contemporary art gallery
Music
* Gallery (band), an American soft rock band of the 1970s
Albums
* ''Gallery'' (Elaiza album), 2014 album
* ''Gallery'' (Gr ...
for sound art pieces.
Exchange and archive
To share the shows the Radia Network formerly used Radioswap.net, a semi-public closed platform for program exchange between community radios. Now it utilizes the server space of one of its member stations. All Radia shows are archived at the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
.
Members
Members of the Radia Network are
radio stations
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio signal, audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-b ...
,
webradios and art-radio projects that broadcast the Radia weekly show and produce shows in turns.
Founding members
On 3–7 February 2005, there was a first meeting of radio stations in Berlin under the banner of NERA (New European Radio Art). The decision was taken to start a broadcast season the following April, and an email discussion list was set up on which the name Radia was finally settled on.
Founding members are:
*
Resonance FM
Resonance 104.4 FM is a London based non-profit community radio station specialising in the arts run by the London Musicians' Collective (LMC). The station is staffed by four permanent staff members, including programme controller Ed Baxter and ...
(London, UK)
*
Rádio Zero
Rádio Zero (also called Zero) is a non-profit webradio with an academic origin and nature, based at the Instituto Superior Técnico campus in Lisbon. Its stated mission is to serve as a free access to production and broadcast of radio programs b ...
at the time designated RIIST (Lisbon, Portugal)
*Kanal 103 (Skopje, Macedonia)
*
reboot.fm
reboot.fm is an artist-run radio station broadcasting on 88.4 FM in Berlin, and 99.7 FM in Potsdam, Germany. The non-commercial radio is run by klubradio Gmbh and housed in the kunstlerhaus Acud and formerly in the House of World Cultures, Berlin ...
(Berlin, Germany)
* (Brussels, Belgium)
*Radio Cult (Sofia, Bulgaria), inactive since December 2006
*
Tilos Radio
Tílos ( el, Τήλος; grc, Τῆλος, Telos) is a small Greek island and municipality located in the Aegean Sea. It is part of the Dodecanese group of islands, and lies midway between Kos and Rhodes. It has a population of 780 inhabitants ( ...
(Budapest, Hungary), inactive since December 2007
* (Vienna, Austria)
* Radio Oxygen (Tirana, Albania), would actually never contribute.
New members
* (Marseille, France), February 2006
*Lemurie TAZ (Prague, Czech Republic), March 2006, inactive since November 2008
*
WGXC
WGXC is a community radio station licensed to Acra, New York, United States, and owned by Wave Farm. The station broadcasts at 90.7 MHz from a directional antenna, and serves Greene and Columbia Counties in New York.
History
The station ha ...
/Wave Farm at the time designated free103point9 (Acra, New York, USA), first non-European radio station, September 2006
* (Brussels, Belgium), January 2007
*
Soundart Radio
Soundart Radio 102.5 fm is an art radio station based in Dartington, Totnes, Devon, UK. Founded as a student radio station in 2006 by two graduates of Dartington College of Arts, Nell Harrison and Lucinda Guy, the station moved onto a full- ...
(Dartington, UK), March 2007
* (Halle, Germany), May 2007
* (Frankfurt, Germany), April 2008
*
XL Air
XL or variants may stand for:
Arts and entertainment
* XL (band), a J-Pop band
* XL Recordings, a British independent record label
* XL, a character in the animated series ''Buzz Lightyear of Star Command''
Businesses and organizations Transport ...
(Brussels, Belgium), June 2008, inactive since July 2018
*
CKUT
CKUT-FM is the official campus radio, campus community radio station of McGill University. It can be heard at 90.3 FM radio, FM in Montreal. CKUT's FM signal, broadcast from a tower on the top of Mount Royal, reaches as far as the Eastern Townshi ...
(Montreal, Canada), July 2008
*
Radio One (Dunedin, New Zealand), August 2009
*
CFRC
CFRC-FM (101.9 MHz) is the non-commercial campus radio station at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. The station has one of the longest radio histories in Canada, with experimental broadcasts dating back to 1922 and serves Que ...
(Kingston, Canada), December 2009, inactive since December 2019
* (Graz, Austria), February 2010
* (Siena, Italy), March 2010
*
Radio WORM (Rotterdam, Netherlands), May 2010
*Escuela Creativa de Radio TEA FM (Zaragoza, Aragon-Spain), January 2011
*Radio Student (Ljubljana, Slovenia), February 2012
*Curious Broadcast (Dublin, Ireland), April 2012, inactive since September 2013
*Radio Valerie (Melbourne, Australia), July 2012, inactive since August 2012
* (Nantes, France), October 2012
*
Radio Nova (Oslo, Norway), February 2013, inactive since March 2018
*
Radio Campus Paris (Paris, France), March 2014
*
Eastside FM (Sydney, Australia), May 2015, inactive since December 2017
*Kol HaCampus (Tel Aviv, Israel), May 2016, inactive since September 2017
*DiffusionFM 91.9 (Sydney, Australia), January 2018
*Usmaradio (San Marino), July 2018
* (Luxembourg), January 2019
Syndicating partners who play but do not produce Radia shows are Resonance Extra (Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, London, Norwich, UK) and
CFRU (Guelph, Canada).
Affiliated to the network are (Vienna, Austria), Mobile Radio (Ürzig, Germany) and Radioart106 (Haifa, Israel)
Special events and broadcasts
*15–18 October 2004: Resonance "Radio Art Riot", a four-night event bringing together some of the foremost radio artists and thinkers from around the world in a studio-as-creative-lab situation which featured round table discussions, live radio art, performances at venues around London and streamed events from other countries. Themes included 'Plunderphonics/Sampling', 'Copyright/Copyleft' and 'Radio Text'. This was the first time that some of the radio stations that would later become Radia worked together - Resonance from the U.K., reboot.fm from Germany, Orange and Kunstradio from Austria, Tilos from Hungary and Radio Cult from Bulgaria.
*10–14 April 2006: Meeting in Lisbon and co-producing of a radio art festival with Rádio Zero under the banner of RadiaLx2006.
*15 September 2006: First Radia special, simultaneously broadcast live on 9 radio stations: ''Time labs'' is a collection of one-minute pieces from artists of the Radia Network. It was released for the final conference of the radio territories project.
*April 2007: The Radia Network has received an honorary mention at the 2007 Prix
Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in the ...
. According to the Ars Electronica website, ''"The Radia Network is a community of independent radio stations who have combined to facilitate an ongoing shared cultural initiative. The stations, based throughout Europe, share in weekly commissioned pieces that explore radio as an art form. Each station produces a piece in turn, which all of the partners then publish. The pieces do not seek to promote a common language, but to celebrate the diversity of the breadth of their contributors. It uses the possibilities opened up by the net to share the work and ideas not only of the stations but also of the artistic communities that themselves represent the audience of each contributor and then, through extension, of the whole."''
*19 July 2007: The Radia Network is presented at the Radio Grenouille's ''Grenouille Capitale'' festival in Paris, with a special piece by Radio Free Robots collective broadcast on
Radio Campus Paris.
*28 October 2007: The Radia Network was invited by the Radiophonic festival in Brussels. ''Radioactive Radiophony'' is a 4-hour live show made with in situ and streamed performances, simultaneously broadcast on 13 radio stations.
*December 2007 – January 2008: Diverse retrospectives of the Network's recent activity. ''3 journeys through Radia'' on ÖRF Kunstradio, ''a Radia retrospective'' on Resonance FM, ''Espectro Electro Magnético'' on Antena 2 (Rádio e Televisão de Portugal).
*28 February – 8 March 2008: Radia shows are featured daily on the "
AV festival
AV Festival is an international festival of contemporary art, film and music, based in Newcastle upon Tyne. A biennial event, the Festival is thematically curated across contemporary artistic practice and wider society.
History
AV Festival 2014 ...
radio station" in Newcastle. Besides this regular shows from Radia member stations are broadcast on Soundscape FM in Sunderland.
*20 to 28 September 2008: the RadiaLx2008 festival hosts a meeting for Radia and promotes Radia shows and Radia artists performances in Lisbon, Portugal.
*28 December 2008: a special 2008 review/mashup is broadcast at Kunstradio.
* Selected works from the more than, at the time, 200 productions of Radia shows could be listened during the 2009 edition of Festival Silêncio, promoted by Goethe-Institut Lisbon, Portugal.
* A special selection of Radia shows was broadcast during Radio Futura, a temporary station of the Future Places Festival in Porto, 14–17 October 2009.
* Radia gave support to the 3rd edition of the RadiaLx Festival in Lisboa in 2010. Several stations did live streamings to the Festival and other rebroacasted parts of it.
* In September 2010 Radia started uploading its archive into archive.org.
* From 12 to 16 October 2010 the full of season 23 of Radia programmes was re-broadcast during Future Places Festival in O'Porto, Portugal, incorporated in the Radio Futura temporary radio station (91.5 MHz FM Porto).
* From October to December 2010
ORF Kunstradio broadcast a series of five radio art programmes specially curated by Radia, that were recorded during the Radia Art Camp in July 2010 at the
Gasometer in Oberhausen.
* From September to December 2012 the first complete retrospective of Radia shows was broadcast on Mobile Radio BSP as part of the 30th
Biennial of São Paulo in Brazil.
* During the
Radio Revolten festival in Halle, in Germany, - from 7 to 9 October 2016 - a general meeting of the Radia network took place, mixing performances from members and re-tuning the network for the future.
* A 21-part programme series called Radiaphiles showcasing member stations and associated artists of the Radia network was produced for and broadcast as part of
documenta 14
documenta 14 was the fourteenth edition of the art exhibition documenta and took place in 2017 in both Kassel, Germany, its traditional home, and Athens, Greece. It was held first in Athens from 8 April to 16 July, and in Kassel from 10 June ...
in Kassel and Berlin from 17 June - 7 July 2017.
[{{cite web, url=http://www.documenta14.de/en/public-radio/13778/savvy-funk, title=documenta 14 radio - SAVVYfunk, accessdate=2017-12-12]
Notes
External links
*The Radia Network websit
Radia.fm*Old Radia Network website @ archive.org waybackmachine : from March 2005 to May 200
radia.constantvzw.org*Radia Network website @ archive.org waybackmachine : from August 2006 onward
radia.fm
Radio networks