Radio Alice was an Italian free radio broadcasting from

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

at the end of the 1970s. It started transmitting on 9 February 1976 using an ex-military transmitter on a frequency of 100.6 MHz. The station founders were associated with the Italian counter-culture movement of 1977 and drew inspiration from the

Situationists The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

and Dada. Franco "Bifo" Berardi, one of the founders, described Radio Alice as a "mix between a classical medium of militant information and a sort of art experiment in media sabotage." The station was closed by the ''

carabinieri The Carabinieri (, also , ; formally ''Arma dei Carabinieri'', "Arm of Carabineers"; previously ''Corpo dei Carabinieri Reali'', "Royal Carabineers Corps") are the national gendarmerie of Italy who primarily carry out domestic and foreign polic ...

'' on 12 March 1977. Radio Alice then re-opened again for two years and became politically aligned with the

autonomism Autonomism, also known as autonomist Marxism is an anti-capitalist left-wing political and social movement and theory. As a theoretical system, it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerism (). Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tendenc ...

movement. After closure, the frequency was then given by the state to

Radio Radicale Radio Radicale is the official radio station of the Italian Radical Party. Founded in 1976 as part of the ''Radio libere'' ("Free Radio”) movement, it has no commercial advertisements and is partly funded by the party, with support from the Ita ...

. Radio Alice's output covered a myriad of subjects: labor protests, poetry, yoga lessons, political analysis, love declarations, cooking recipes,

Jefferson Airplane Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band based in San Francisco, California, that became one of the pioneering bands of psychedelic rock. Formed in 1965, the group defined the San Francisco Sound and was the first from the Bay Area to ac ...

Area Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a region on the plane or on a curved surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape A shape or figure is a graphics, graphical representation of an obje ...

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

music. Participants in the station included Franco "Bifo" Berardi, Maurizio Torrealta,

Filippo Scòzzari Filippo Scòzzari (Bologna, 1946), is an Italian comics artist, painter and writer, one of the main figures of the 1970s underground art movement. Known for his first comic at Mondadori's '' Il Mago'' under the pen name Winslow Leech, he worked ...

Paolo Ricci Paolo Ricci (c. 1500, in Palermo – c. 1575, in Caspano, Civo) was a Franciscan, then a Lutheran, possibly an Anabaptist, and only allegedly an Antitrinitarian. He also adopted academic pseudonyms: Lisia Fileno (Latin: Lysias Paulus Riccius Ph ...

and

Carlo Rovelli Carlo Rovelli (born May 3, 1956) is an Italian theoretical physicist and writer who has worked in Italy, the United States and, since 2000, in France. He is also currently a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute, and c ...

. In 2002 some former staff members participated in the founding of Orfeo TV, the first

Telestreet Telestreet is an Italian movement that set up free TV stations in several metropolitan areas in Italy. The movement started in Bologna with a small transmitting station, OrfeoTv, which was founded by 'media theorist'' and activist Franco "Bifo" Ber ...

unlicensed TV. The work of Radio Alice inspired the founders of

Novara Media Novara Media (often shortened to Novara) is an independent,F. Mayhew,The Media Fund offers 'democratic' alternative to billionaire press owners and BBC' (11/10/17) in Press Gazette left-wing alternative media organisation based in the United King ...

References

*''Alice è il diavolo - Storia di una radio sovversiva'', 1976, L'Erba Voglio (2002, Shake Edizioni)

External links

Watch ''Lavorare con lentezza''
by Massimo Lualdi (Italian)
Interview with Bifo about the Radio

Il corrispondente operaio, a newsletter published by Radio Alice
Autonomism Mass media in Bologna Pirate radio stations Radio stations in Italy 1976 establishments in Italy 1979 disestablishments in Italy Radio stations established in 1976 Radio stations disestablished in 1979 Defunct mass media in Italy {{Italy-media-stub

See also

References

External links