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

The Project of Self-Realization is Borne of
a Passion for Love
Touch That Dial • 163
A skipping record, the wrong turntable speed, dead air: deejays’ worst
nightmares are the most common compositional tools for the radio
artist. Stutters, burps, hems and haws. Excess (through these “mistakes”)
is a necessary stage for live radio artists in purging themselves
of the myth of the radiogenic. The world of radio is populated by
fences, imaginary fences of quality. This demarcated territory can be
reappropriated by an act of playful measuring, categorization mutates
to become fractal geometry:
bellybutton to nose: 24in.; neck extended: 7in.; mouth to ear of other:
instant lengths; transmitter to transmitting: 47 abrasions, 32 bruises
and a light concussion; right knee to hip: 20in.; birthmark to tattoo:
5in.; breathing each other: 2 or more radio plagiarists; chest to chin:
11in.; depth of listening: no. of captive kilometres.
These contorted measures are determined by the imagination and
exemplify the evasive parameters of radio art. Through them we get
a glimpse at radio’s tenuous and shifting contours. We are mapping
the body of a medium whose form is based on a language of otherness,
displacement and transmission.
Isolated, the Three Passions are Perverted
One, the project of communication is borne of a passion for creation.
Two, the project of participation is borne of a passion for playing.
Three, the project of self-realization is borne of a passion for love. Isolated,
the three passions are perverted. Dissociated, the three projects
are falsified. The will to communicate becomes artificial objectivity;
the will for participation serves to organize the lonely in a lonely
crowd; the will for self-realization turns into the will for power. The
homogeneous radio landscapes sanctioned by formulae comprised of
lowest common denominators have unfortunately deadened the voices
of the airwaves. Yet despite the medium’s persistent dead set monotony,
in sporadic pockets of creative resistance, an art of radio is being
conceived through a process of deconstruction, demystification and
deformatting. Once stripped naked, rather than dictate sense, radio