Name: Constellations of Listening 2-3pm by Shortwave Collective
Duration: 1 h

22 hour radio broadcast on Radio Art Zone, 12 Aug 2022 from 2pm CEST - 13 Aug 2022 at midday

​Our recent work constructing ‘Open Wave-Receivers’ (self-powered radio receivers made from readily available and found materials)brings into focus the site-and-time specificity of radio reception. We experiment with designs that incorporate the physicalities of an immediate space into the circuit - such as coils wrapped around roof tiles, ground wires connected to garden taps, and antennas attached to fences - all of which set the circuit within a specific location. By listening over time, we notice the atmospheric and environmental influences on radio reception. We think of these and other radio devices in-situ as part of a larger constellation of bodies, materiality, and connection experienced through listening.

Over the course of 22 hours during Radio Art Zone, listeners were able to tune into Shortwave Collective engaged in collective and solitary listening experiences as we searched for radio reception through Open Wave-Receivers and other devices such as VHF and VLF receivers, software-defined radio, walkie-talkies, and electromagnetic detectors. Our collective material was sourced over many months and seasons, and across different time zones, from listening sites that connect environments, technologies and voices. Each recording was broadcast at (or close to) the hour it was originally heard. In two live sessions taking place during the Perseids meteor shower, Shortwave Collective members filtered recordings made by the group through their home environments: between 18:00-18:30 CEST on Friday 12th August from a garden in Crete, and 11:00-11:30 CEST on Saturday 13th August from a mountain in the south of France. Our 22 hours concluded from the garden in Crete for the final half hour.

https://www.shortwavecollective.net/constellations-of-listening.html

Constellations of Listening 2-3pm

Hannah Kemp-Welch is a sound artist with a social practice. She creates works collaboratively and in community settings, often responding to social issues. Recent projects include ‘The Right to Record’ (2021) - a creative campaign with disabled activists, which successfully lobbied the Government to change a harmful clause within the benefits system; ‘Meet Me on the Radio’ (2020-21) - a weekly Resonance FM programme co-produced with elders isolated during lockdown; and ‘o-o-radio!’ (2023) - a project at Wysing Arts Centre, constructing homemade radios with d/Deaf young people, to better understand how hearing aids operate.
 
Hannah has a particular interest in transmission arts - she experiments with DIY radios and produces zines to make these technologies accessible. She is a member of feminist radio art group Shortwave Collective and arts cooperative Soundcamp, and has produced works for Radio Art Zone (2022), Movement Radio (2022), and Radiophrenia (2020-22). 

In this episode Owen Kelly makes a genuine inquiry into the possible interfaces between feminism and ham radio.

Feminist Acts Of Ham Radio

Shortwave Collective is an international, feminist artist group established in May 2020, interested in the creative use of radio. We meet regularly to discuss feminist approaches to amatuer radio and the radio spectrum as artistic material, sharing resources, considering DIY approaches and inclusive structures. ​

Shortwave Collective are: Alyssa Moxley, Brigitte Hart, Franchesca Casauay, Georgia Muenster, Hannah Kemp-Welch, Kate Donovan, Lisa Hall, Maria Papadomanolaki, Sally Applin and Sasha Engelmann.

Constellations of Listening 2-3pm

Shortwave Collective

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