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

188 • islands of resistance
limited in size that listeners are most likely to be producers as well.” 14
This has recently become a reality with community-oriented pirate
radio stations emerging on the Gulf Islands off the mainland of British
Columbia, in which the listeners are also the suppliers. However, after
contributing a weekly show on a Gulf Island radio station, I came to
the realization that these stations don’t necessarily wake up the radio,
and operators can easily fall into the trap of using a computer with
automated playlists of MP3s.
What is it that I mean by waking up the radio? Mediums usually end
up piggybacking on each another, and in the process of going from
one technological advance to the next we often dismiss the idea of a
medium being used as an art form in itself. Radio is a medium that,
more often than not, is simply used to broadcast commercial recordings,
rather than functioning as a potential sound source, or a site specific
transmitter and receiver of sound. To illustrate this point, we can
go to a performance from 1951, in which John Cage wrenched the radio
out of sleep with Imaginary Landscapes 4, composed for 12 radios. The
composition involves various notes for the “players” of the 12 radios,
such as volume and tone control. Each concert is a unique, contingent
event, relying upon what is on the radio at the hour of the performance.
Much like the “Tom Thumb” example with the phonograph,
I am sure that there were many undocumented cases of radios being
used in this manner, tweaking the knobs on and off, in a kind of play
that is inherent to the medium. We can go to a recording of a conversation
between John Cage and Morton Feldman, that’s available on an
internet archive, 15 in which Cage compares Imaginary Landscapes 4 to
lying down on a beach and being able to hear multiple radios on different
stations simultaneously. Even if undocumented sounds existed in
a similar way, Cage takes the idea to another level, using the 12 radios
not simply as receivers, but also as instruments.
I first explored using radios in a way that is akin to John Cage’s
Imaginary Landscapes 4 during a residency at La Chambre Blanche in
Québec City in 2006. This time, I installed a more powerful 12-watt
radio transmitter in the artist residency space, and an antenna on the
roof, capable of transmitting eight kilometres. This project involved
researching the history of St. Roch, which is the neighbourhood where
La Chambre Blanche is situated. A local historian and a pastor at the
St Roch Church were interviewed and recorded. Field recordings from
the neighbourhood were sculpted and collaged with the interviews,