ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s, while working in community radio in Canada, I wrote a manifesto titled “Naked Radio.” Its intent was to question the listener’s expectations and resist governmentally imposed formatting restrictions. Here is a selection of the manifesto’s twenty-two entries: “Always give the wrong time, date, weather and news report / Constantly change your broadcasting frequency / Say what another station is saying at the same time; if they complain, tell them you’re a ventriloquist / Fill your program with nothing / Empty your program of everything / Go as fast as the technology you’re using; carry your words to your listeners by running / Dispel the notion than anyone is listening to you / Make every receiver a transmitter.” The prompts are playful and poetic, absurd and utopic; they are meant to function as conversation starters. Discussing the relevance of this manifesto in the contemporary context of narrow/broad/pod-casting will be one of the aims of this presentation. This is by no means radio’s only manifesto, there are predecessors of course (Marinetti, Kogawa, etc.), and there are bound to also be successors. Radio’s futurity is a collective endeavor; it can only be conjugated in the plural. Imperatives are commonplace in the manifesto genre. These can at times be strident, even coercive. But when artistic ambiguity is foregrounded, room is made for speculations and aspirations. The broad objective of this talk is that by focussing on radio manifestos of the past, radio’s progressive and liberatory power can manifest by shifting from potential to kinetic energy. After all, radio waves are kinetic. Action and activation are core properties of radio. A corollary is that there is nothing neutral about radio. The stakes are high and my implicit assertion here is that radio art experimentation can play a role in combatting the totalitarian tendencies of echo chambers by proposing new and nimble paradigms. Not paragons, but contingent and unpredictable stratagems replete with both beguiling noises and engaging silences. Perhaps through this investigation we will be able to answer the following question: Is radio one of the machines that can “kill fascists”, as the sticker on Woody Guthrie’s guitar famously proclaimed?
MANIFESTO
1. Always give the wrong time, date, weather and news report.
2. Constantly change your broadcasting frequency.
3. Do any technical repairs, regular cleanings, planning for shows, committee meetings, training sessions, etc. on the air.
4. Say what another station is saying at the same time. If they complain, tell them you’re a ventriloquist.
5. Insist on the global installation of radio parking meters. The more you stay tuned to only one station the more you have to pay.
6. Have an “Upside Down Week”; where all shows would be found in a different time slot.
7. Have a “Search Week”; where all shows would not be found.
8. Have a “Traffic Jam”; where stations in different cities broadcast each other’s traffic reports instead of their own.
9. Play the accordion: go from one watt to full power in one watt per day increments and back down again.
10. Keep all faders up for as long as it takes to play the entire record library of the radio station and then get rid of it.
11. Keep all faders down and wait for a phone call.
12. Fill your program with nothing.
13. Empty your program of everything.
14. Give your guest the controls and put yourself at the guest spot.
15. Dissect the equipment of your radio station into its component parts: transistors, capacitors, integrated circuits, etc. and send one out to each of your listeners.
16. Go as fast as the technology you’re using. Carry your words to your listeners by running.
17. Find out who is listening to you at every moment and when you say hello on the air you have to say hello to every single one of them. The more people listen, the less you can say, aside from naming them.
18. Find out how a radio broadcast is broken down into categories by your government’s regulatory body and mimic that analysis on the air. Their analysis assumes content is quantifiable. The categorization system becomes the content and they are left empty-handed.
19. Have a fleet of bicycles racing with radios that are broadcasting another bicycle race.
20. Re-locate your station to the bottom of a swimming pool, watch radiowaves drown.
21. Dispel the notion than anyone is listening to you.
22. Make every receiver a transmitter.
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1. Always give the wrong time, date, weather and news report.
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2. Constantly change your broadcasting frequency.
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3. Do any technical repairs, regular cleanings, planning for shows, committee meetings, training sessions, etc. on the air.
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4. Say what another station is saying at the same time. If they complain, tell them you’re a ventriloquist.
v1
v2
5. Insist on the global installation of radio parking meters. The more you stay tuned to only one station the more you have to pay.
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v2
6. Have an “Upside Down Week”; where all shows would be found in a different time slot.
v1
v2
7. Have a “Search Week”; where all shows would not be found.
v1
v2
8. Have a “Traffic Jam”; where stations in different cities broadcast each other’s traffic reports instead of their own.
v1
v2
9. Play the accordion: go from one watt to full power in one watt per day increments and back down again.
v1
v2
10. Keep all faders up for as long as it takes to play the entire record library of the radio station and then get rid of it.
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v2
v3
11. Keep all faders down and wait for a phone call.
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v2
12. Fill your program with nothing.
v1
v2
13. Empty your program of everything.
v1
v2
14. Give your guest the controls and put yourself at the guest spot.
v1
v2
15. Dissect the equipment of your radio station into its component parts: transistors, capacitors, integrated circuits, etc. and send one out to each of your listeners.
v1
v2
v3
16. Go as fast as the technology you’re using. Carry your words to your listeners by running.
v1
v2
17. Find out who is listening to you at every moment and when you say hello on the air you have to say hello to every single one of them. The more people listen, the less you can say, aside from naming them.
v1
v2
18. Find out how a radio broadcast is broken down into categories by your government’s regulatory body and mimic that analysis on the air. Their analysis assumes content is quantifiable. The categorization system becomes the content and they are left empty-handed.
v1
v2
19. Have a fleet of bicycles racing with radios that are broadcasting another bicycle race.
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v2
20. Re-locate your station to the bottom of a swimming pool, watch radiowaves drown.
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v2
21. Dispel the notion than anyone is listening to you.
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v2
v3
v4
22. Make every receiver a transmitter.
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