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11 Grad, Wind und noch mehr Wind aus Süden, lautete die magische Wettervorhersage an diesem Tag. Wir starteten 15 Minuten vor der Zeit: Zur Freude der vorbeisegelnden Vögel mischte sich das Tonband von Lukatoyboy mit ihren Stimmen und dem Rauschen des Windes.

Weitere akustische Magie kam aus Australien in Form einer Aufzeichnung von Tuning Forks, einer “Wahrsage-Kochshow” der Klanghexen Julia Drouhin, Philippa Stafford und Biddy O’Connor.

Radiogast des Tages war die in Helsinki lebende, finnisch-tschechische Künstlerin, Aktivistin und Dichterin Roza Turunen, die in Begleitung ihrer Schriftstellerfreundin Maija Karakoski und ihrer Mutter und Kostümkünstlerin Jana Vyborna-Turunen kam. Roza stellte ihr Bewusstseinsstrom-Gedicht “Caesura of Tragedy” vor, das sich mit magischen Momenten in der alltäglichen Welt beschäftigt.

Unser anschließendes Gespräch drehte sich um Rozas Schreib- und Wahrnehmungspraktiken. Caesura of Tragedy zum Beispiel wurde in jedem Wort unverändert gelassen. Die Gedanken der Dichterin wurden direkt auf ihrem Notepad aufgezeichnet.

Das Gedicht der antidisziplinären Künstlerin Cecilie Fang Our skin as a Carrie – “Wortzeilen, die die Ökologie der Berührung verschlingen” (Fang), bot sich als ebenso schöner wie passender Abschluss von Rozas Lesung an.

Taking a small break on the path to the house, I was lucky to strike a very quick conversation with the artist Sirkku Ala-Harja about sea monsters, the theme of her two drawings put up at the gallery.

Spells for changing weather conditions are a common and worldwide spread magical practice. A Prayer for Rain, for everyone, sent to Harraka Island Radio by Sebastiane Hegarty offered “A fragment of voice from an anonymous audio cassette letter, sent from Canada to Winchester, UK and found in a second-hand shop in the late 1990s.” This was followed by GongPunk, a “sound recording of a “Gong Bath” provided by the Gong Master Gonzalo Zavalla and intervened in real-time by Franco Falistoco in 2018.”

The last conversation transmitted to the airwaves of Harakka Island was with Kari Yli-Annala, reflecting on the event’s tides of performances, lectures, movie screenings, and the exhibition in the gallery Lennätin. Altogether, more than 20 artists shared their art and knowledge. Kari said, a better-funded and more thoroughly advertised “Week of the Impossible” would of course still offer more channels to spread the interdisciplinarity of the Experimental Arts… as is his declared endeavor for 2024. Together with the visiting guests of the gallery we then listened to last day’s recording of Joonas’ lecture.

Our broadcast closed with a work by the sonic anthropologist Tom Miller, Thin Cities – an “imaginary sound-mapping of Thomas More’s fictional 16th-century island of Utopia, built around analog tapes of Italo Calvino reading from his books Invisible Cities and Mr. Palomar.“

It felt sad to leave the island, the (im)possibility of returning for more radio and more analogue magic hanging in the air like Petrichor. Yet, what became very clear again – in my talks with Kari, in the multi-felt’ processes related to radio-making and getting to know a new place with its varied fauna and flora: Radio is a medium that is reaching out… and truly affects the listeners’ being-in-the-world. I liked Harakka Radio’s humble 92 MHz frequency that shared (and re-shared) the air space with hundreds of watchful avian nesting. Important to say: everybody I spoke to, was greatly impressed, amazed, dazed (you name it) by the very existence of radio art.

Contributing radio artists of Day 4 (in loose order of appearance)

  • Julia Drouhin, Pip Stafford, Biddy O’Connor: Tuning Forks
  • Tiger Stangl: Rewind
  • Cecilie Fang: Our Skin as Carrier Bag
  • Sebastiane Hegarty: A Prayer for Rain, for everyone
  • Franco Fallistocu: Gong Punk
  • Joonas Jokiranta: Magiasta. Lecture from 27th of May
  • Tom Miller: Thin Cities

Last but not least remark: ­­Some views of the island and the station’s surroundings were captured on a mechanical panorama camera :) If something’s on the film: You will see it in due time.

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(Deutsche Übersetzung folgt) Saturday started with gentle winds and a changeable sky, filled as usual with the screeches of the watchful terns. Two guests were scheduled for today’s program, filmmaker and scholar Minou Norouzi and nature guide and photographer Erkki Makkonen.
As the theme of the day was ‘Island Ecologies’, Sarah Washington’s “Analogue Birds”, was the first thing to play while preparing a late breakfast with strong coffee.

The day’s playlist contained – not without a reason! – Dinah Bird’s “Different Rains”, Peter Cusack’s Berlin magpie recordings, and Sebastian Pafundo’s wave song piece “Dorothy”.  The Brazilian composer and radio artist Roberto D’Ugo had sent three compositions, all of them exploring analog sound/field recording (and making) and/or the imagery of the sea and liminal loop rituals. We played “M.A.R.” and “Stranger in the Nest”.

Minou Norouzi is a documentary filmmaker and critic with a focus on documentary art practice, knowledge production, and diasporic cinema language. 
For Harakka Radio she had prepared a text about islands which playfully approached the different connotations of the terms ‘island’, Isola, isolation… – and the sociopolitical parameters attached to them: the use of islands as prisons, or as conveniently isolated spaces for the mentally ill or the dead, for example. The audio file they brought was a piece by artist Moses Sumney, cut together with her most central statements about islands.

We also talked about her involuntarily lengthened stay on the Helsinki island Suomenlinna during her HIAP residency in 2021: The rules of the Covid pandemic required her to extend her stay from 2 months to a much longer term.

Erkki Makkonen, nature guide, and photographer, arrived around 3:30 pm. A photo was taken – on physical film material.

Maybe Erkki was the right person to ask why there no magpies could be seen on the ‘Magpie Island’, but hundreds of breeding barnacle geese and terns? Magpies reside here at a different time of the year he says, and explains, that it is only since 1990 that the barnacle goose made Harakka island its breeding place. Our talk meanders from the history of the island and the buildings on it (telegraph communications and chemical laboratory) to the educational work of the nature guides to the climatic changes evolving during the past decades. Having worked as a nature guide on the island for about 25 years already, Erkki drew on a deeper-than-usual sensing of the island’s nature. I wanted to learn more about possibly specific dealings with birds as more-than-human messengers between earth and sky. Owls, he says, would be the kind of bird that he has connected to in the past. Maybe, he says and laughs, he would even turn into one, in another life.

It is only in later research that I found out about the mystery tales about the barnacle goose which was believed to grow either from (equally black-and-white) barnacles clinging to floating timbers or, as this illustration below shows, from barnacle mussels hanging from a tree and then ripening into birds.

After the radio, we all walked over to the auditorium of the academy to witness a live painting video by Liisa Kallio, followed by a lecture about magic by the Karelian artist Joonas Jokiranta. Joonas had already started his performance, covering the blackboard with words and symbols. Luckily most of his words could be recorded as ‘impossible’ radio sorcery for Harakka Radio’s very last island broadcast, the Day of Magic!

Contributing radio artists (in loose order of appearance)

  • Sarah Washington: Analogue birds
  • Sebastian Pafundo: Dorothy
  • y2mate.com-Moses-Sumney-insula (Track by Minou)
  • Roberto d’Ugo: M.A.R.
  • Dinah Bird: Different Rains
  • Joan Schumann: Generative Engine
  • Peter Cusack: constant_magpies_distant_sirens_dogs&voices; very_close_magpie_sparrows
  • Roberto d’Ugo: Stranger in the Nest
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The very analogue sign for the small ferry boat to stop at the Merisataman Mattolaituri pier and take passengers to Harakka Island is a white wooden arrow that needs to be lifted and fixed (for darker circumstances a lamp can be switched on). Kari, Rori and the boat arrived at almost the same time, and the sign was lowered again.

Together with Rori the six listening stations around the gallery were quickly set up. Our broadcast started with cloudy weather and a pensive piece by the Irish artist Ian Joyce, “Wind Flute” from the series Mountain Trio Study. For this series – about nomadic song, sound, and experiences of invisibility – a set of haikus was written and translated into Finnish, the words surfacing from time to time in the compositions.

Rori had also invited a silent yet very interested guest, an amateur ham radio activist who, alas, declared he was too shy to speak on the radio. For quite some time he sat down close to the first listening station and seemingly enjoyed the show.

With our focus on the earth and geology, we instead turned to an excerpt of Kate Donovan’s ‘Elements’ show, which she had created in 2020. With the artist guests Catherine Evans and Ally Bisshop their scope of conversations reached from Polish crystal mines to the unpredictable rock landscapes in Iceland.

Guest of the day was geologist Antti Salla who arrived at 2 pm. Antti is a Senior Specialist at the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) and he is renowned for his knowledge of the rock formations in and around the city of Helsinki.

Our conversation drew on the geological features of Harakka Island, some of them bearing extraordinary witness to the movements of the earth during the ice age. And even now, as Antti stated, the island is in movement, raising each year 3-5 mm above sea level. Certainly, a very small, hardly noticeable movement, yet one that brings the immense differences in human and geological time to mind.

On being asked about his personal feelings of being-with ‘geologic entities’, he stated that indeed his work teaches him a good measure of humbleness but also, in its very ‘down to earthness’ brings happiness to him.  The talk closed with a piece by Joan Schumann about “time, deceleration tactics, deep listening and the collective symbology of end-times and freedom”: Generative Engine.

While listening, the sky darkened by the minute and ­ ­– after yesterday’s experience – made us decide to move the table into the anti-chambre. We were all a bit excited about the upcoming phone call to England and the prospect of a live telephone earth hum concert.

The UK radio and sound artist Jonathan Moss uses “recordings of the 50Hz harmonic interference in the earth. The harmonics are adjusted with an LFO. Frequencies about 10KHz are realised using hetrodyning, so they become audible for humans.”

During our chat, two of his pieces were played, but the main part was Jonathan improvising a saxophone tune in response to a recent hum recorded in his garden. On my asking, he says yes, indeed: The frequencies and rhythm of the soil do change according to the seasons of the year. A hum in spring is different from a hum recorded in autumn. Of course, location, co-habiting species (mushrooms, earthworms, ants…), and the weather also play into the tunes.
From the UK we then turn to Ireland, with a short piano impromptu from Ian Joyce’ series Trio Mountain Studies: #5.

The last piece of the day was a composition by the sound and intermedia artist Petra Kapš (alias OR poiesis): KISETSU Quarry. Based on 10 years of revisiting and recording in the quarry of Kisetsu in the Karst region close to the Adriatic Sea. Using fragments from a sonic archive of recorded material, – field recordings, traces of performances, and poetry – she finds beautiful words to describe the credo of this piece:

The prophecy for the future is hidden in the substance – we need to listen, to dwell deep inside in order to understand and to predict. Seemingly deaf darkness of the stone substance is potent with knowing.

Contributing Radio Artists in loosely remembered order of appearance

  • Ian Joyce: Mountain Trio Studies #5 and #2
  • Kate Donovan with Catherine Evans and Ally Bisshop: Elements Show Minerals and Chrystals
  • Joan Schuman: Generative Engine
  • Jonathan Moss: Human Hum Humble, Tuning into Easter Garten + Live Talk and impro via phone
  • Petra Kapš aka OR poiesis: Kisetsu Quarry
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(Deutsche Übersetzung folgt) Six listening stations were set up around the gallery Lennätin: Six radios adorned with feathers transmitted the studio situation to the visiting or passing guests (tourists, children’s classes, nature lovers, artists, birds, and insects).

Rori Vallinharju

Harakka Island Radio received personal support from the immensely helpful assistance of Rori Vallinharju, who took care of helping with the set-up of the station and providing everything needed during the first two radio days.

Our broadcasting range was small, due to the rocky geography of the island and the rather low elevation of the transmitter being fixed to the wall of the house. Gallery Lennätin is a small house with a gallery space, a kitchen, an anti-chamber, and a small wooden terrace on which we installed the radio station. Our frequency was 92 MHz.

Harakka Island Radio started with Peter Cusack’s recordings of magpies (Harakka means ‘Magpie’ in Finnish), that now interweaved with the constant screeches and warning hisses of the seagulls and barnacle geese that were nesting all over the island. And while I Am This Radio was playing, Kari Yli-Annala, the organizer of the event of the “Week of the Impossible” made himself comfortable at the microphone.

As the founder of the island’s Nomad Academy of Experimental Arts, into which this former telegraph building still stemming from the Russian occupation has been converted, Kari jokes that who else than artists would be able to put up with the hundreds of angry birds populating the island. Kari works in Helsinki as a filmmaker, media artist, and art teacher, yet, the “Day of the Impossible” – according to Sun Ra, the 22nd of May – forms a central theme for his activities assembling ‘impossible’ artists to join him on the island for art exhibitions, lectures, performances, and… this time, even radio.

The main building hosts more than 20 studios rented out to different artists; for the “Week’s” events, the artworks are installed at the separate Gallery Lennätin, with an ancient farmhouse building of the “Kasematte IV” serving as a performance and multi-media space.

With this year’s focus on ‘the analogue’ it was clear that pre-digital recordings would be a favourite sound resource for the radio. Tiger Stangl’s short Rewind was a good example to play… a soft, as windy as melodic tape hiss. We examined some of the tapes Kari had been given for this event and played an excerpt from Lukatoyboy’s last-minute collage for Harakka. Anna Friz’ piece Radiotelegraph featured a sending of a radiotelegraph in spoken Morse code from the Skaftfell Center for Visual Art in the small town of Seyðisfjörður on the east coast of Iceland where she had undertaken a two-month residency. In only just introducing these works the bandwidth of the radio art spectrum became evident. 

The Taiwanese media artist and musician Wan Quian Lin aka Winona had arrived together with Kari already around noon. Originally based in Berlin, she too had undertaken the ‘impossible’ journey to Harakka Island. Her work, “The Whisperings of Mushrooms”, would be staged the following day at the Kasematte IV building, in cooperation with the Finnish dancer Sara Kovamäki.

We listened to an excerpt of her music, and we spoke about her fascination with the mycelium underworld. In her performances, she uses piezo and contact microphones which are intricately connected to objects in the room and to each other, creating a self-responsive web of communications.

Musically, the program of Day 1 continued with more tapes (and rewinds)  by potentiometer conductor Maximillian Glass, who spun through the frequency worlds of medium wave radio (AM) and uninterrupted waves (CW).

With Rori, who is active as a socio-cultural activist and artist we talked about the theme of psychogeography: What is it that makes the aura of a place special, even maybe eerie or tense, or relaxed? While we chatted on, alarming lightnings crisscrossed the sky and thunder could be heard from afar. Then, quite suddenly,  a gust of rain flooded the radio table and we decided to call it a day. The last piece played that day was Magz Hall and Peter Coyte’s collaborative piece Outside –  an auditory work that maps and makes audible sea and air pollution. A piece too, that brought us back to our location on an island that, just a stone’s throw from the city, is all the more vulnerable to all man-made environmental threats.

Kari Yli-Annala

Day 1 Radio Artists in loosely remembered order of appearance

  • Peter Cusack: Berlin Magpies
  • Gabi Schaffner: I Am This Radio
  • Tiger Stangl: Rewind
  • Lukatoyboy: Tape4Harakka
  • Anna Friz: Radio Telegraph
  • Maximillian Glass: The Conductor at the Potentiometer
  • Magz Hall and Peter Coyte: Don’t Listen Up

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There are connections between the magic and the analog that maybe need not be spelled out. Who does not know the occurrence of the ghostly presence of an unknown voice in a room? Or, the aura of a geographically remote place unfolding in your very living room. There are other and less evident concepts of magic (which is – strangely – an extremely rational and analogue pursuit) in our world that we would like to examine further… yet, this would mean to overfreight for this very spontaneously conceived insular event.

For the four days from the 25-28 of May, we have put together a program that can be roughly divided into four theme days:
1 Radio waves, Rain and Tapes. With Kari Yli-Annala
2 Grounding the Ear: Listening to the earth’ hum, talks about geology and the mysteries of minerals. Live Phone call with Jonathan Moss, UK
3 Analogue Birds and Plants. Island life. Guest: Erkki Makkonen
4 Word Magic: Poetry, Radioplays, Encantations. Guest: Róza Turunen. Open Studio.

Harakka Radio is prone to faults and flows, broadcasting on a narrow range that covers the island… just so. it may disrupt our habits of listening while at the same time opening up new ways to perceive. The program includes sonic artworks by more than 20 international sound and radio artists. that at times might be hard to distinguish from the wind and waves combing the leaves of trees and grass on the island.

The program will run from 1 or 2 – 5 pm, with the station situated at the Lännatin Gallery. The studio is open to visiting guests. Analog documentation in photography and writing is welcome.

Harakka Radio is also about listening culture on a social scale, people can come together to listen, a somewhat long-forgotten tradition of being and sharing together.
Prepare for the unexpected, maybe even the impossible! Harakka Radio and the Nomad Academy of Experimental Arts wish you a magic stay on the island.

Please bring your radio and tune to 92 MHz fm ! Or come and sit by one of the four listening stations we have etablished!

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(Übersetzung ins Deutsche entfällt) Dear contributing Open Call Artists,
dear Radio Enthusiasts, Analogue Islanders and Visitors!


As always, I am surprised, touched, and at times quite overwhelmed by the bandwidth, and beauty of your contributions. This time even more, because (probably) none of you living far away from Finland can really listen to them… they are broadcast exclusively via FM on the small island of Harakka, which is a short boat ride away from the pier in Helsinki.

At this point in time, the list of participating sound and radio artists reads like this:

  • Anna Friz
  • Cecilie Fang
  • Franco Falistoco
  • Ian Joyce
  • Joan Schuman
  • Jonathan Moss
  • Julia Drouhin – with Pip Stafford and Biddy_Connor
  • Kate Donovan – with Catherine Evans, Ally Bisshop)
  • Lukatoyboy
  • Magz Hall – with Peter Coyte
  • Maximillian Glass
  • Franco Falistoco
  • Petra Kapš aka OR poiesis
  • Roberto D’Ugo
  • Sarah Washington
  • Sebastian Pafundo
  • Sebastiane Hegarty
  • Tiger Stangl
  • Tom Miller

Due information about the pieces played and on which days will be given (latest) by Thursday morning. Harakka Radio is welcoming local artists and scientists to its program, as invited by the event’s organizer, artist and founder of the Nomad Academy of Experimental Art, Kari Yli-Annala:

Antti Salla, geologist. Day 2, 2 pm
Erkki Makkonen, plant specialist Day 3
Róza Turunen, poet. Day 4, 3 pm
Minou Norouzi, film maker. Day 3

The dates and times given are subject to changes! Additional guests are expected!

As the final schedule is not yet decided on, new info will also be shared a bit later on. Our frequency is 92.0 MHz. The program starts each day at 2 pm and ends at 5 pm… unless decided otherwise.  Broadcast assistant is Rori Vallinharju.

For all of you who want to visit the Island, this is the schedule for the ferry:

https://www.merenkavijat.fi/yhteysveneen-aikataulut.html

Please bring your radio! There are some specimens on the island to listen to/borrow but isn’t it much nicer to walk around and catch the radio waves by your own device?

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Open Call (Übersetzung ins Deutsche zu späterem Zeitpunkt)
The Magic of the Analogue: ‘Magpie’ Radio on Harakka Island

Celebrating the Magic of the Analogue, Harakka Radio invites you to contribute and shape a live radio program on the occasion of the Week of the Impossible, organized by the Nomadic Academy of Experimental Art, Helsinki, Finland.

For a whole week from the 22nd on, Finnish media artist and performer Kari Yli-Annala invites the world to join the artistic activities at Nomad Academy. This year’s theme is “The Magic and the Analogue” – and what can be more magic and analogue than a W-Lan-free radio station on an island?

Harakka Radio is an off-shoot of the nomadic and ecologic radio art project Datscha Radio, and is maintained by Gabi Schaffner. We will broadcast for 4 days between the 25 and 28 of May on Harakka Island, reviving the tradition of micro-broadcasting. Each day for 3-4 hours, we will probe into the psychogeography of the island. The live broadcasts will present talks and readings, concerts, and experimental music.

We are curious about:

  • Local knowledge about the fauna & flora, the ecology and the history of Harakka Island
  • Poetry/conversations relating to rocks, stones, islands, birds, sea, air, radio
  • Magnetic tape recordings and your experimental tape music
  • Non-digitally produced/recorded sound art
  • Morse music, Magpies
  • Time: Deceleration tactics, deep listening
  • When interested to perform live, please send 100 words about your idea J
  • You must own the (copy)rights of your production!

Deadine and Formats

Deadline is May, 20th. Please:

  • Please send your magic radio contribution as mp3 ONLY (preferably 320 Mbits)
  • label your tracks: firstname_lastname_title
  • include a pdf with <100 words about your piece (how it relates to the theme) and your person
  • put Harakka Radio as the subject line
  • send the link to info@datscharadio.de via wetransfer et al

How to listen

The station’s range of FM radio waves will cover the island… and only the island.

In order to listen visitors must take the ferry and bring a radio with them (yes, one of those boxes with antenna and a scale pointer­). Harakka Radio will be situated at Gallery Lennätin.

We are fond of an open studio-situation: performers, spontaneous live guests and visitors are welcome.

Sustainability

You are heartily invited to take out your old cassette recorders and analogue cameras from their closets and experiment with analogue documentation. We would love it, and include the results on the Datscha Radio site.

Fees
Harakka Radio works on a non-commercial basis, therefore we cannot reimburse you for your valuable time and work. What we have to offer is a radio station and art platform for discovery, exchange and networking. In the off-line world. Nähdään pian!

All copyrights stay with the artists. For more information about the project, please refer to datscharadio.de or write.

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Harakka Island Radio

Für den Fall, dass es Euch nicht bekannt war: Der 22. Mai ist der
‘Tag des Unmöglichen’. Der finnische Medienkünstler und Gründer der ‘nomadischen Akademie der experimentellen Kunst’, Kari Yli-Annala, lädt ab dem 22. Mai für eine Woche zu künstlerischen Aktivitäten auf die Insel Harakka vor Helsinki ein. Das diesjährige Thema lautet “The Magic of the Analogue”.

Datscha Radio freut sich, in Gestalt einer experimentellen Mikro-UKW-Station seine plötzliche und überraschende ‘mission impossible’ für den 25. bis 28. Mai 2023 anzukündigen!

Gemeinsam mit den Inselbewohner*innen, Künstler*innen und Gästen und unter dem Dach einer einstigen Telegrafenstation wird Harakka Radio ein 3-stündiges Live-Radio-Programm auf UKW für vier Tage gestalten. Detaillierte Infos hierzu im Laufe der nächsten Posts.

Die Insel

Die Insel Harakka (=“Elster“) liegt eine 30-minütige Fährfahrt vom Zentrum Helsinkis entfernt, eine überwiegend flache und felsige Platte aus Basalt und Glimmergneis, durchzogen von schimmernden Adern verschiedenster Mineralien: Magnetit, Hornblende und der turmalinähnliche, gelbgrüne Epidot. Die Insel Harakka steht nicht still: Mit einer Geschwindigkeit von 3-4 mm (30-40 cm pro Jahrhundert) hebt sie sich weiter über den Meeresspiegel. Sie ist heute unbewohnt, beherbergt aber ein Naturschutz- und Bildungszentrum sowie verschiedene Gebäude und Kasernen aus der Zeit der russischen Besatzung.  Der Hauptveranstaltungsort des Events, die Nomadenakademie, war früher das Telekommunikationszentrum. Leider ist von den technischen Einrichtungen heute nichts mehr erhalten.

Das Radio

Das Radio wird eingerichtet in einer ehemaligen Telegrafenstation in Küchennähe.

Harakka Radio wird nur auf der Insel und nur auf UKW zu empfangen sein. Das Liveprogramm mit Focus auf die Psychogeografie des Eilands wird sich also teils im Verborgenen abspielen; die Besucher*Innen werden gebeten, eigene Empfangsgeräte mitzubringen.

Internationale Klang-, Tonband- und Radiokünstler*innen: Ihr seid herzlichst eingeladen, Eure Werke dem Inselpublikum vorzustellen.

Wir sind neugierig auf:

  • Magnetbandaufnahmen und experimentelle Tonbandmusik
  • Nicht-digital produzierte/aufgezeichnete Klangkunst
  • Entschleunigungen
  • Wenn Ihr interessiert seid live aufzutreten, sendet 100 Wörter Info an info@datscharadio.de

Einsendeschluss ist der 20. Mai. Detaillierte Informationen sind im Open Call beschrieben.

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