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

The Power of Small • 203
kathryn walter
Kathy Kennedy leading a soundwalk in Banff during
private investigators
drawing boundaries by the range of audibility created by these small
satellites. Because radio figures prominently in the discourse of acoustic
ecology, a discipline that is central to my art practice, I began to
wonder about the integration of radio with nature. This led to a new
series of performances.
Radio Soundwalks
At the Banff Centre in 1993, I started creating radio-based soundwalks.
The term “soundwalk” refers to the acoustic ecology practice of
walking along a designated path and listening as deeply as possible, for
between 30 minutes and one hour. It’s a pleasant activity for a group,
particularly for those of us who are bored to tears of recitals. However,
if even one person in the group is not interested in listening, then
the exercise becomes futile for all involved. The soundwalk becomes a
painful game of shushing the offenders who seem to only want to do it
more when they realize they are breaking the rules!
By integrating radio into performance, I found a kind of tool that
could act as a common thread, to link beginning to end and to contextualize
the whole. I was trying to heighten the listener’s experience