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

178 • islands of resistance
pedestrian areas of radio and television along with visible light, microwaves,
and military radar. The image of the spectrum is a decidedly
linear mapping that is both discursive and geographic, representing a
flat earth to be divided up among government and corporate interests;
a territory that periodically is auctioned off to the highest bidder, and a
political as much as scientific construct designed to control “inappropriate
transmissions” through frequency allocation and licensing. 19
How would our image of the spectrum shift, what understanding
might be possible, from a phenomenological experience of the same?
What kind of radiophonic relationships might we sustain across time
if we think of radio as more than point-to-point communications on
a licensed frequency? Listening across the spectrum yields a radically
different impression than the visual charting of it: frequencies are not
discrete, but noisy as well as harmonic, overlapping one another and
full of fluctuation, interference and dynamic activity. Declaring ownership
over such oscillating territories perpetuates the relentless functions
of colonialism that have consistently worked toward conquest
rather than collaboration or custodianship. The alternative history of
radio that pirates hold in common reimagines broadcast communication
and the potential for community within the radio spectrum.
Likewise, the use of unlicensed transmitters to explore and play with
the materiality of electro-magnetic waves has the potential to reimagine
radio as a medium. Here the notion of radio shifts from a radiant
means of communication to a resonant though unstable environment
that is immersive, palpable and affective: an ocean of sonorous and
sibilant waves that is an index of relationships, both microscopic and
cosmic in scale, with which humans may collaborate, but cannot claim
to own.
notes
1. CITR Radio, the campus/community FM station broadcasting from the
University of British Columbia, Vancouver. http://www.citr.ca/ (accessed March
15, 2009).
2. Brandon LaBelle, “Transmission Culture,” in Re-Inventing Radio: Aspects
of Radio as Art, ed. Heidi Grundmann et al (Frankfurt am Main, Germany:
Revolver, 2008), 85.
3. See Chapter 10 in this volume.
4. Kogawa is perhaps best known for his part in the micro-radio boom in
Japan in the 1980s, and currently for his micro- or mini-FM transmitter designs