Andrea Langlois et al - Islands of Resistance - Pirate Radio in Canada

146 • islands of resistance
late 1980s. 2 Richard continues to work in large-scale maneuver projects
that resonate within social spheres inside urban and rural settings
and online. Within this essay, the concept of the maneuver is applied
to interdisciplinary initiatives in which illegal radio broadcasting
becomes a prevailing factor in the process of interfering with social
reality. Pirate broadcasts produced within the context of a maneuver
follow forms of art practices found in the tradition of experimental
art production 3 and are rooted within radical social movements. 4 The
maneuvers discussed herein were undertaken in Québec between
1983 and 2005 by different artists and collectives. 5 Pirate radio broadcasts
produced by these artists were for the most part “substitution
broadcasts,” meaning they temporarily jammed the broadcasts normally
issued by commercial radio stations within a limited geographical
area. Their attacks against licensed radio stations had a guerrilla
nature and aimed to temporarily occupy their assigned space so that
the audience member listening to the programming on that frequency
would have a unique experience. The execution of these works thus
took into account the regular programming broadcast on the commercially
“owned” frequency. A substitute broadcast replaces the
music usually heard with new aural/oral experiences. The content of
these substitute broadcasts often embodied a critical position against
the regular programming heard on the pirated frequency. Other
broadcasts explored here took place within radio’s free spaces — the
spaces between used frequencies, which are unassigned and therefore
available for pirating. These broadcasts are what I call “supplemental
broadcasts,” which tend to be community-based and festive. 6
Parasitizing
Since the early days of radio, its producers have tried to create broadcasts
within a restricted, highly fragile and easily disrupted space
— the airwaves. Every station uses a single sensitive frequency to
transmit inside a given geographic area (except in some totalitarian
States where the airwaves may, in some cases, be occupied by a sole
broadcast — or sole noise — intended to jam foreign broadcasts). 7 Like
still waters, compromised space can be disrupted, and the shores of
frequencies are susceptible to opportune interferences by those who
describe themselves as “parasites.” Claiming the socially denigrating
term of parasite as their own, radio pirates have continued to muddy