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Helen said this: Radio Art in America
Posted by: Justin Grotelueschen on May 28, 2005 09:43 PM | Comments (4)
Helen started New American Radio in 1985 as a program that employed several aesthetics and styles -- playing experimental radio and musical works by artists from Negativland to Diamanda Galas. For us, Helen played some work by Terry Allen that melds interviews with music in a compelling fashion -- a Vietnam vet, a young mother from Tijuana. The kicker was called "Audiographs: Sounds from the Tenderloin", which chronicled the words of homeless people in San Francisco, outside the production studio, people who normally were never heard on the air. All of this work needs a place, and at one point the radio waves were the primary place, other than hard-copy media with poor distribution.
Helen walked us through sound art on the radio in the U.S., about the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1965, and how funds when public radio (NPR) was created went to sound imagery on the radio. But by the early '80s, there was a withdrawal of public funding due to "no interest to the general public", mostly due to audience research that suggested low listener interest in radio art. But still, in 1985, many institutions from San Francisco to New York served as bastions for experimental radio, and by the time she discontinued the show in 1998, by which time only five stations were covering her show, those bastions were all gone. She says public broadcasting pushed out these sources and subsequently relegated those sounds to community, college, pirate radio, the underground, and now small pockets of the Internet. Much of this we know, but maybe we don't think about enough.
She whacked us down with a taste of reality: there is no history of radio art in America, but only work that bubbles up to the surface, only to retreat to the depths. Is there a resolution?
It's refreshing to hear someone with her excellent resume of radio experience to talk about podcasting and how it has the potential to spread interesting works, rather than refusing to change with the times like so many public radio minds in the states. But she also talked about webcasting to spatial coordinates, to send audio (radio art) to a specific physical space via the Internet. That's her idea. Her reference, for example, is that anyone with headphones and a GPS device walking through the Boston Common can hear an experimental radio story, courtesy of Boston artist Terry Reed (sp.?), and depending on their coordinates with always hear a slightly different version of the story.
Helen still keeps it real via the Turbulence web site as well as somewhere.org, which is now a New American Radio archive with hopes to have space for new work.
*Gayle and Helen strike a pose*
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