Every year, for some time now, CiTR radio in Vancouver , and a few independent and college radio stations around the globe, have worked to give modern art a transmitter. The concept of giving art a birthday was introduced by French born artist / peacenik Robert Filliou (associate of John Cage, by the way) In 1963 asserted that 1,000,000 years ago, there was no art. But one day, on the 17th of January to be precise, Art was born …when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Filliou had lofty ideas floating around inside his skull about “relative permanent creation”, an exercise in inner peace to be directed outward and into world peace. A continuing playful anarchy as a way of rejecting “the fascism of the square world”; the world which refuses to break free of conventional wisdom and the inevitable war it falls into again and again. Interestingly, through plan or coincidence, war and the horrors of fascism tend to be recurrent themes in many of the 24 Hours of Radio Art’s sound collages.
These audio-art projects bring to mind other vividly surrealist elements, namely the inter-active game known as “Exquisite Corpse.” This was an activity that usually involves three or more artists (generally visual types) that would start a drawing or montage on a piece of paper. When that artist was finished the paper was folded back or covered so that the next participant could not see what image came before. When the entire piece is finished, an amazingly bizarre picture is presented for the enjoyment of the group. When several stations (or even multiple people in the radio studio) are involved in radio-art and sharing audio over the internet, we have in essence, an audio version of an Exquisite Corpse. Combined with the surrealist’s interest in random or spontaneous creations well, I’m sure the tie-in is all too obvious. Not to say that 24 Hours of Radio Art is all about noise. No. The day is about art and other arts have been known to broadcast. Poets and live musicians have graced the studio with their original contributions. The familial links of the creative arts are concrete and incontrovertible.
CITR’s involvement in 24 Hours of Radio Art has its roots primarily in the sound experimentations of Peter Courtemanche. Peter hosted the Weekly program “The Absolute Value of Noise” from 1988 to 1992. This program featured a wide variety of radio-art and experimental audio – often generated live on the air. This radio show developed into the annual 24 Hours of Radio/ART program (1992-96) – a collaborative event that explored the concept of a “radio-art” station; an event that posed the question: What would happen if your local FM pop-rock station suddenly decided to go to an all audio-art format? The answer may be available on January 17th again. Then again, 24 Hours of Radio Art may also be the answer to the question of what do space aliens listen to at home.
In more recent years 24 Hours of radio Art has been made possible by sound-artists at CiTR such as past program director Anna Friz, followed by experimental program enthusiasts Luke Meat, and Bleek through the generous support and scheduling of our current PD Bryce Dunn and a cast of other wonderful volunteer programers and submissions from everywhere.
24 Hours of Radio Art will broadcast Midnight to Midnight, January 17th on CiTR 101.9 Vancouver. Online at www.citr.ca
Schedule
00:00-1:00 Intro
1:00-2:00 EBNC – epicaricacy.org/artists/ebnc/
2:00-3:00 Andy Hunter
3:00-4:00 Andy Hunter
4:00-5:00 Andy Hunter
5:00-6:00 Andy Hunter
6:00-7:00 Joshua Fried
7:00-8:00 Sophie and Ryan
8:00-9:00 Breakfast With The Browns
9:00-10:00 Plucked
10:00-11:00 Porter Hall
11:00-12:00 Queer FM
12:00-13:00 DJ Drake
13:00-14:00 Chris Burke?
14:00-15:00 Value Village People
15:00- 16:00 Value Village People
16:00-17:00 Robyn Jackob
17:00-18:00 Oswaldo Perez
18:00-19:00 Disrecorded
19:00-20:00 Radio Free GAK
20:00-21:00 Radio Free GAK
21:00-22:00 Paul G, aka Doctor B
22:00-23:00 Phineas Narco (National Cynical Network)
23:00-24:00 Troll Rouge