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

Pirate Radio and Maneuver • 153
This quote eloquently elucidates Terraflops’s apprehension about the
response of State mechanisms for the control of the airwaves. For
example, while Pouf-FM was in operation, it eluded (on several occasions)
detection by the electronic devices of the State, which, when
alerted by unknown parties, are used by CRTC (the Canadian Radiotelevision
Telecommunications Commission) personnel to uncover
transmission sources. This fear of being located has led most pirate
broadcasters to develop specific strategies related to the length of the
transmission or to the tracking used by government vehicles dedicated
to locating pirate antennae. 19
Radio Art in Institutional Spaces with FM Micro Broadcasting
At about the same time, I carried out, along with Québec City’s Diffusion
système minuit (Midnight System Communications), various
maneuvers alongside several artists discussed here, who used radio
as their medium in the context of a radio art and performance event.
Over six days, the interdisciplinary event Retour de voyage en ces lieux
oubliés de l’anéantissement (Back from a Trip to Annihilation’s Forgotten
Places) presented, alongside an archival display of radio creations,
over fifteen performances, namely those of Jeff, Karma Terraflop and
algojo) (algojo, but also those of interdisciplinary artists Christof
Migone, Willem de Ridder, Luc Desjardins, Neil Wiernik, Emmanuel
Madan, in addition to the aboriginal sound artist Chris Wind and
Québecois electroacoustic composer Michel Smith. 20 The audience
was equipped with various receiving devices, which enabled them to
listen to the exhibition on the FM band throughout the exhibition’s
space and the perimeter of the building housing Articule, a Montréal
artists’ centre, where the event unfolded. 21
Sonia Pelletier, art critic for Inter magazine, described the event as
follows:
Back from a Trip to Annihilation’s Forgotten Places provides an
unconfined visual framework tuned into radio works (systems of hidden
tape recorders, earphones, documentation transferred to videotape),
pirate transmitters (two frequencies), and olfactory, tactile and
visual evocations. Radio pieces were selected from Indonesia, Holland
and Canada. The feat of such an initiative lies, in my opinion, in the
execution of the idea that art coincides with the assertion that the
essential is found in the invisible, and that process eludes time. In this