Text: Kate Donovan

***In the beginning, there was radio. ***

Some say that there was a quickening, and that the Earth’s core bubbled and burped to release the egg, and that the soft, brittle egg cracked to release the worm – the double worm of two entwined in one – to let it slither out and go underground, to disperse through all elements and up through the aether, burrowing down and emerging up at the same time. (Though some say it was the other way around.)••• But the sun and rocks and stars know that there was radio even before that, and nuclear waste (among other things) will go on to tell our (non-human) successors of the future, that there will still be radio, even then.

The final day of the festival saw us move the studio outside into the garden, toes in the earth, voices in the air. The theme for the day, as I understood it, was threefold: slowing down, thinking about materialities, and imagining. Radio precedes and exceeds us, it lends itself to the imaginary because it stretches beyond our wildest comprehensions. Thinking in such timescales forces us to think beyond what we know, have known and could possibly know; it is a wonderful moment for what Donna Haraway terms ‘speculative fabulation’. (I made that up about the radiating DNA worm.)

What I find most compelling about the so-called Anthropocene, is the curious, yet ironic effect it has of making us humans think beyond ourselves, beyond the space and time of ourselves, to the matter in, of and around our planet. And it pushes us to think further, if we can, beyond our physicality to a materiality of immateriality. In the radio garden – a materiality of frequencies.
Paying attention in the garden, we become aware of the unseen transmission of information, between plants, between insects, between humans, between living cells, molecules, bacteria, between all or any combination of these things with each other, all the time. Sometimes we need to slow down to notice the details, to concentrate, to focus, to ruminate. To decelerate. To work against the speed and force in which human endeavours are impacting the Earth.

Some say that the experience of dying is twofold: time slows down whilst mental images cascade. Here I will provide a cascade of images from Datscha Radio17’s final day, for you to read slowly:

• a text on the interaction of elemental fluxes, the codes of the universe held within a breeze, being read over recordings from a wind tunnel;
• talking about how one lives on, how the seeds of ones essence are dispersed after death, and how they may suddenly begin to grow in unexpected places;
• listening to the details of our shared immediate surroundings, and taking our subjectivities into consideration;
• dunking our heads into the waters and finally hearing what the sirens have to say;
• singing, spontaneously, together;
• talking with plants about their root system communications and ancestral knowledge;
• carefully, carefully looking in the garden to make music with water and air;
• wondering at the immensity of burrowing insects and seismic vibrations; pushing our senses to the limit in order to smell the airwaves…

…though let’s see this not as an end, but as a step into winterly rejuvenation. This year saw a good and varied harvest in the Datscha garden, and this catalogue is just one of the many fruits. Some others – which were airborne – have already scattered through the elements as electromagnetic waves and more, dispersing and combining with other remnants, to compost, to create and share nutrients, to enrich the soil, and will emerge again when the temperature is right.

***In the end, there will still be radio***

Translation: Gabi Schaffner

[Show as slideshow]

Text: Rafik Will

Making radio and listening to radio, garden work and garden recreation – what is the outcome of a combination of these components in “radio gardening”? Datscha Radio17, a temporary radio station, is dedicated to this question. In the summer of 2017, it re-flourished for five days at the edge of Berlin and one thing became clear: the powerful symbiosis went beyond the constraints of both radio and garden.

One did not find a sound-proofed broadcasting studio in a magnificent building guarded by a janitor, but a cozy datscha that opened its mic not only for invited guests, but also for surprise visitors; besides international sound artists and neighbours from the garden colony, there were also the song-loving birds of the area, and occasionally even plants. Because potatoes and peonies can express themselves, too. Not via spoken word, but via other electric or fragrant ways. Alternative communications.

All these wondrous discoveries remind one slightly of the ‘Perinphon’ networks from Dietmar Dath’s science-fiction novel The Abolition of Species, in which the descendants of humans keep themselves updated via an information system that is based on especially designed scent molecules. In Dath’s novel, the gente can simply smell what’s going on. The plant world of today has already attained this science-fiction! Could we also see Datscha Radio17 as a futurististic translation machine for communication with the plant world that is way ahead of its time, way ahead of a breakthrough into the mainstream of its time? Why not!

Communication was an important keyword for the entire Datscha Radio 17. It was not just about making as many people as possible interested in its programme, but also the communicative interaction with its audience, as well as with its location; the biotope of the garden played a major role. What is the societal role of the garden today, and what might it be in the future, was also vigorously debated in various discussion rounds.

But also as an acoustic gallery, Datscha Radio17 cut a grand figure. Whoever came out to visit the open garden society could listen to poetry readings under the honey yellow moon, witness live concerts with the accompaniment of crickets, or soak up the variety of guest contributions that arrived from almost all around the globe with a glass of apple cider.

In conclusion: The concept of “Radio gardening” is convincing. The garden is transformed from a sealed off plot, where a sole ruler decides over the weal and woe of the plants, to a real place of encounter for a diversity of life forms. Such a policy of open borders is an effectively lived utopia in times of increasing tendencies to compartmentalise, and a real ray of hope. And radio is transformed from a one way medium to a media platform that is shaped by participation. With Datscha Radio17, even the listening itself does not happen like usual wireless consumption – only at the breakfast table inside one’s own four walls or in the car, that is, either alone or with the familiar yet closed company of family, friends or acquaintances – the garden-based listening groups that came together in various locations were exemplary of that.

Only a drop of bitterness remains: the short flowering duration of the five day Datscha Radio17. But just like a herbaceous perennial that hibernates after blossoming, Datscha Radio17 will surely reflourish in one of the coming summers and, like a rare plant, will enlighten the radio landscape again.