Radio ART

The Radia Network emerged from a series of meetings, clandestine events, late night club discussions and a lot of email exchanges between cultural radio producers across Europe. The topics vary and the reasons for forming a network are many, but Radia has become a concrete manifestation of the desire to use radio as an art form. The approaches differ, as do the local contexts; from commissioned radio art works to struggles for frequencies to copyright concerns, all the radios share the goal of an audio space where something different can happen. That different is also a form in the making – radio sounds different in each city, on each frequency. Taking radio as an art form, claiming that space for creative production in the mediascape and cracking apart the notion of radio is what Radia does.

It is producing radio stuff that is hard to describe. Some of it can be labeled radio art, or experimental radio, or creative radio. Sometimes it talks, sometimes it doesn’t. It can be noisy, or a kind of soundscape, or a documentary, a document, a talk, a performance. Each and every week, one of the partners will provide the network program, commissioned and produced especially for this purpose : being broadcast by all the partners and made available online.

Some things have to be said about all those partners. They are radio stations, of the independent, non-commercial, community, cultural species. They all speak different languages, and this should create interesting problems. Although initially they were all European radio stations this has changed over time and Radia has become not only larger but also more diverse: 20 partners in 13 countries and growing all the time.

From Wikipedia :

Started in April 2005, the Radia network is an international informal network of community radio stations that have a common interest in producing and sharing art works for the radio. In 2020, the network gathers 24 radio stations from 23 cities across 17 countries, speaking 10 different languages.^[1] It also organizes linked-up events and special broadcasts. Radia intends to be a space of reflection about today’s radio and radio art. Its activities try to contribute to intercultural exchange and artworks’ and artists’ circulation.

The network’s name freely refers to La Radia,^[2] a Futurist manifesto written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti^[3] and Pino Masnata in 1933. The network’s founders dropped the La to distance themselves from the Futurists’ political views. As it stands alone, “radia” is simply “radio” or “radios” in some languages.

Contact: contact _at_ radia _dot_ fm