Radio-Break
April 14 – 22, 2012
Various sites in Los Angeles
I worked with graduate students in the Art and Curatorial Practices MA program at USC Roski School of Fine Arts on the final project in the Curatorial Practicum. The student curators––Gladys Hernandez, Zachary Kaplan, Sarah Loyer, Ilana Milch, Eva Ruether, Megan Sallabedra, Jacqueline Von Treskow, Adrienne White and Emily Wilkins––conceived Radio Break, a series of twelve artworks experienced through low power radio transmissions and live performance.
The serial events of Radio Break took place over the course of two weekends in multiples sites throughout the city of Los Angeles. The artworks were presented in connection with the ambient noise of the city, as viewers come into contact with performances, moments in history, experimental music, narratives and unspecified noise. Both personal and anonymous, they invited interventions into the urban space. Radio Break’s suggested itineraries, each activated different modes of transportation—the Metro, cycling (during CicLaVia), walking, and driving, providing different opportunities to tune into, or out of, an environment and work of art.
Saturday, April 14th: MTA GOLD LINE, MARIACHI PLAZA (via metro)
Alyce Santoro juxtaposed New York subway sounds in Between Stations, a work for Los Angeles which contrasts the dominant modes of transportation through which each city is experienced.
Brandon LaBelle and collaborators recorded their own versions of overheard conversations—from people and places on the streets of Santiago de Chile—creating The Echo Project, an echo for amplification when broadcast from Boyle Heights’ Mariachi Plaza. An opening reception at
La Serenata Restaurant, Boyle Heights provided an opportunity to mix our own Angeleno voices with the Chilean ones in LaBelle’s project.
Sunday, April 15th: CICLAVIA (via bicycle)
Brendan Threadgill’s Incident Reports 2003-2011 (MacArthur Park Homicides), reconfigured the Los Angeles Times Homicide Map with marking the sites of lives lost throughout the city in sound.
Pedro Reyes sourced digital voice messages from Angelenos, bringing to bear the private lives of anonymous city residents with the work Voice Mail Radio.
Arnoldo Vargas’ project with Slanguage Studio, Triggernometry and the Cartography of Sound, gave voice to Wilmington residents who broadcasted their concerns to the city at a remove.
Friday, April 20th: MoCA (various forms of transportation)
Elana Mann, in caroling the concerns of foreclosed Angelenos, made evident the suffering wrought by the financial crisis with the work Human Microphonics.
Saturday, April 21st: HOLLYWOOD (via foot)
Lucy Raven performed the audio play, Con Air 2, a record of actual events—the artists’ friends at play, communicating via walkie talkie—while also representing a fictionalized setting.
Two-Headed Dog presented Clowntown City Limits, a radio play that turns Hollywood into the set for a Beckett-like performance of a bleak tale of economic recession.
Vanessa Place performed Full Audio Transcripts, audio recordings from the Federal Aviation Administration, North American Aerospace Defense Command and American Airlines from the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, as a “found” narrative—before comprehension or memorialization.
Sunday, April 22nd: WEST HOLLYWOOD (via car)
Richard T. Walker attempted to reconcile image and reality with scale and illusion with his work As Its Silence Soars, a mellifluous composition of music and spoken dialogue accompanied a photograph displayed on an urban billboard.
Lincoln Tobier revisited The Orchestra Pit Theory by Roger Ailes, a theatrical work based on a single Fox News transcript explored the genre of the news broadcast, affect and subjectivity within media representation.
David Schafer remixed John Cage recordings for his Static Age and performed live in his installation at For Your Art for the closing reception of the project.
Download a pdf of Karen Moss’ Radio Break preface.
Download a pdf of the Radio Break poster and the way-finding map.
Link to the Radio Break interactive website with details about locations and artist projects: radio-break.com
Link to soundcloud to listen to some of the Radio Break projects: soundcloud.com/radio-break-2012
Link to an article in Radio Survivor: www.radiosurvivor.com