Scottish artists will be broadcasting a series of free live-to-air performances from Glasgow’s CCA Theatre when experimental radio station Radiophrenia returns to the airwaves from 13 – 26 May. Founded in 2015 and managed by Mark Vernon and Barry Burns, the temporary art radio station aims to promote radio as an art form and encourages new approaches to the medium. The broadcast schedule includes live shows, pre-recorded features and a series of live-to-air performances. This will be the fourth time the project has run.
“We’ve been making experimental radio for stations around the world for over 20 years” says Vernon, “and we thought it was time Scotland had a similar station. Last time we had over 4,000 listeners in 50 countries around the world. We’re hoping to build on that audience base this time, introducing them to some of the best of Scottish and international radio artists.”
Participating performers include Swedish sound artist Hanna Hartman, open reel tape manipulator, Jérôme Noetinger, and Poulomi Desai who will be improvising a tone poem inspired by electrical hums, the mystical Om and Glasgow’s notorious Dr. Walford Bodie, “The Electric Wizard of the North”.
“We’ve asked a variety of artists to respond to the challenge of making a piece that will work as a live performance in front of an audience and also as a broadcast to an invisible audience at home. We’ve invited people from a number of disciplines – writers, musicians, radio producers and visual artists – and encouraged them to be as experimental as they want and to exploit the possibilities of radio” explains production manager Barry Burns.
The broadcasts will also feature live a series of production commissions including new work from local artists Maria Fusco, Oliver Pitt and Ladies As Pimps, and international productions from Pan Dai Jing and crys cole.
“Radio is such a rich medium but mainstream stations don’t really take advantage of that, stuck as they are in stale formats and safe programming”, says Vernon. “Radiophrenia intends to offer an eclectic and surprising listening experience that no other station can offer.”
Radiophrenia will broadcast on 87.9FM from 13 – 26 May with a simultaneous live webstream