Resonance FM
This is the story of a ‘community’ radio station pushing back the boundaries of art and giving a voice to the artists
“Resonance Fm is like a dream. I pinch myself to believe it actually exists in this awfully commercial society we live in today. The radio station is incredibly eclectic and runs without any advertising,” says Simon Tyszko, one of the artists involved with this most unlikeliest of stations.
The world’s first art radio station, Resonance 104.4FM, supported by the Arts Council, was able to raise more than £20,000 recently in its fundraising week. One of the items in their auction list was a bubblebath experience in an iconic bath under an aeroplane wing at Tyszko’s infamous Phlight project. It was sold for £150 in the auction. Rose petals and sea salt from Palestine will be part of the experience while the creator of the artwork Simon Tyszko reads poems aloud during the bubblebath – which will be recorded for the radio of course.
“I made this piece in reaction to events in September 9, 2011,” says artist Tyszko, referring to a huge Dakota aeroplane wing built into his home after knocking down some indoor walls. It is a huge structure made by engineers in a factory. “What I tried to do was hide an aeroplane in a flat. Imagine the aeroplanes crashing into a building, there must have been a moment when there was an aeroplane in the building. The idea was the world very much moved in a very negative direction after the attacks and one French minister said that we were all terrorists. I was focusing on that while thinking about that crash moment, we would all have an aeroplane in our homes that we wouldn’t see,” he adds.
The creator of ecclectic works, Tyszko uses sounds in his sonic art radio show, Isotopica. He mixes spoken word, music, noise and found sounds to create what he calls his “sonic detour programme”.
As an independent radio station, Resonance FM’s are uncategorisable shows that stretch listeners’ boundaries. It is a magnet for London eccentrics with many of its DJs broadcasting from several hideaways all over the capital. One DJ, Harry Haward, who presents the Calling All Pensioners show, has been popular thanks to his robust style of broadcasting.
One of the founders of the radio Ed Baxter says they wanted to create an alternative to the universal formula of mainstream broadcasting, hence creating this “laboratory for wild experimentation”.
Established by the London Musicians’ Collective, Resonance FM started broadcasting on May 1st 2002 to represent the diversity of London’s arts scenes, with regular weekly contributions from nearly two hundred musicians, artists, thinkers, critics, activists and instigators.
For more information on the Phlight project: www.theculture.net or www.phlight.org
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