Access from the Great Pond (Großer Teich) next to the orchard meadow and follow signs from the parking lot after the camping site.
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The weather was changeable and rainy on the last day of June. The puddles on the paths to the garden colony “Einheit” were so deep that we really should have arrived with rubber boots. Instead, we traveled with self-tailored dresses in the style of the 1920s. Because as part of the Long Night of Museums in Altenburg, the motto of the festival in the Historic Laubengarten focused on the founding year of the colony: “A Day in June 1923”.
The small wooden bower, which Datscha Radio used as a studio because of the rain, was not only decorated with porcelain, original table linen, and a brass hanging lamp but also with an old so-called Volksempfänger. It is quite possible that people were already listening to the radio in the allotment gardens back then because 1923 was also the year of the first radio broadcast in Germany.
In order to test the planned VHF transmission in August from the Laubengarten despite the adverse weather, our mini transmitter was mounted on a spruce branch a good four meters long. Frank Vohla, the tenant of the neighbouring Sternengarten (Garden of Stars) and amateur astronomer, came to our aid. The Sternengarten is also a project of the association: a telescope mounted under the attic window will allow future guests to make astronomical observations there.
The rain, however, turned out to be the lesser problem. More problematic was the failure of the telecommunications provider. While we feverishly searched for a solution and found it after some time, the garden and the buffet filled up. Almost every visitor brought a tray with cakes and canapés or drinks for the buffet. The redcurrants were clearly in season.
At 7 pm, we went on air tentatively with a conversation with the volunteer organizer of the festival and chairperson of the Historic Bower Garden Association, Grit Martinez.
She gave us an insight into the development of the foliage colony over the last 40 years. Would the gardens have all been occupied before the fall of the Wall? Here Ms. Martinez answered with a resounding Yes! Before that, there had been a good 60,000 inhabitants in the city, but in the course of the 1990s, there were soon only about 30,000. Not only the young, but whole families left for the West. There are still 66 deciduous colonies in Altenburg, but only just under a third of them are cultivated. While in Berlin and actually in all (West) German cities people have to sign up for long waiting lists for an allotment garden, just three years ago a good 70 unity gardens stood overgrown. The restoration of the Historische Laube and the work of the association led to a reactivation of the abandoned plots as well, of which a good 40 have now been mediated.
Meanwhile, Helen Thein was out and about in the neighbouring gardens to capture the voices of the gardeners: Conversations and walks in front of and behind the garden fences, which in the Einheit e. V. (in contrast to some other allotment garden colonies) are not measured out super-strictly to their 1.20 m with a string.
The interest in nature-friendly gardening is huge and is supported by young and old alike… at least in this colony. Many gardens were and are cultivated by several generations, for example, Mrs. Martinez’s great-grandparents were already working on the same allotment where her parents are currently gardening.
The shellac record collection, which was the musical centerpiece of the entertainment, also came from their estate. A new guest strode through the garden gate and attracted attention: a young man, meticulously dressed in the style of the 1920s. Naturally, we asked for a radio appointment…
8:15 pm was the time for the ‘official radio talk’ with Ms. Martinez and the association’s vice-chair, Christine Junk. Together we looked back at the history of the deciduous gardens and discussed the relevance of subsistence farming today. Ms. Junk, who had taken over the planting of the Historical Deciduous Garden, spoke about the preservation of old fruit and vegetable varieties – also with an eye on climate change, which challenges us to experiment with new species and seeds. Both emphasized the cultural tolerance and openness of their association as the most important feature. Several Ukrainian families have found a new garden home here. What, if not openness and diversity, should make successful gardening possible?
In the next radio talk, we also learned the name of the young man dressed so smartly in knickerbockers and a slouch hat. Matteo had become aware of the theme of the garden festival through the ‘Museumsnacht’ poster. It was a rare opportunity to learn first-hand what makes the magic of the 1920s for young people today… and it became clear that it is not easy to afford clothes and ambience away from the big cities.
Gradually, more and more guests in a celebratory mood streamed through the gate into the Historic Bower Garden. Many came to the bower and peeked in to see what our radio looked like.
Finally, Helen and I looked ahead to our plans for future broadcasts. Datscha Radio returns to the Laubengarten in the first week of August and will lend its eyes and ears to the diverse (wild) gardens of the city, the presence of gardening, and its actors in Altenburg. The ‘Streuobstradio’ in early autumn, on the other hand, will speculate on new seeds and forms of gardening togetherness. We are looking forward to it!
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Datscha Radio travels to Thuringia: On 30 June, as part of the Altenburg Museum Night, we test our set-up for August and September. We will broadcast live from 7 – 10 p.m. from the Historic Laubengarten of the Gartenkolonie Einheit e. V..
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11 degrees, wind with more wind from the South, this was the magical weather forecast that day. Radio started 15 min earlier: To the delight of the birds sailing by and next to the terrace’s railing Lukatoyboy‘s tape mingled with their constant voices and the rushing winds.
More magic arrived from Australia in the shape of a recording of Tuning Forks, a ‘divination cooking show’ by the sound witches Julia Drouhin, Philippa Stafford and Biddy O’Connor.
Radio Guest of the day was the Helsinki-based Finnish-Czech artist and activist and poet Roza Turunen who came accompanied by her writer friend Maija Karakoski and her mother and costume artist Jana Vyborna-Turunen. Roza introduced her poem, “Caesura of Tragedy” as a stream-of-consciousness performance dealing with magical moments in the every-day-world.
Our ensuing talk revolved around Roza’s writing and sensing practices. Caesura of Tragedy, for example, was left unaltered in every word. In this way, the mind of the poetess became recorded directly onto the notepad.
Anti-disciplinary artist Cecilie Fang’s poem Our skin as a Carrier Bag, – “lines of words entangling the ecology of touch (Fang)”, offered itself as an as beautiful as a fitting closure to Roza’s reading.
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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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 film maker 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, 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
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
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).
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.
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
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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