︎
Radio Otherwise
Kate Donovan, Monai de Paula Antunes, Niko de Paula Lefort
& a vast network of radio enthusiasts

Thinking and doing radio otherwise means focussing beyond purely anthropogenic transmissions, recognising relationality within the spectrum of more-than-human radio ecologies. 

About



Together with a wide network of radio enthusiasts, Kate Donovan, Monai de Paula Antunes, Niko de Paula Lefort & M.K. explore the plurality of experiences involved in radio-making in connection to ecological thinking. Radio Otherwise is an ongoing artistic research project motivated by the many knots which art, knowledge-making/sharing and communication encounter.

︎ Radio Otherwise is a 2024 LINA fellow among the 25 individuals and teams. The European platform LINA is an alliance of 35 institutions (and counting). https://lina.community/


For the Spree ~ Channelsea radio group we setup floating sound labs in different locations, as mobile platforms to explore the social, organisational and environmental ecologies of rivers, their shores and inter-tidal zones - specially focused on the Channelsea in London and the Spree in Berlin. We ran a series of reading~listening sessions both in London and Berlin (together with the Zabriskie Bookshop), along with a series of live radio transmissions bringing the rivers and their people into contact.

Spree ~ Channelsea Radio Group is a project by:

We are grateful for the framework and support provided by the Cultural Bridge Fund. Cultural Bridge brings together The Goethe Institue and Arts Council England to create cultural projects between the UK and Germany.

more informations at
https://acousticommons.net/~/

Circling Threasholds was a durational broadcast / performance at Forests of Antennas, Oceans of Waves - An exploration of art and theory in electromagnetic urban environments
A transitional, environmental radiophonic space for the encounter and interaction of signals, bodies, ecologies and knowledges made while circling thresholds o transmissions and architectures, beyond the purely anthropogenic.
A boat was the temporary studio for this durational transmission, as it moves slowly
from the periphery in towards the city of Berlin. A studio that both receives and transmits, generating a complex system of
interdependence shared with others in relation: we will listen out for an equal variety of live, sounding inputs from diverse
microphones and electromagnetic signal from various antennas, in the immediate—and changing—location, all the while streaming online and narrowcasting
on microFM, creating a shifting range of local reception within a 400m circle around the boat. Listeners can connect online, pic up a passing FM signal from the shore, or gather for the culmination event which will only be narrowcast, and set to coincide with sunset at 21:13.


Between April and July 2021, Radio Otherwise: listening, ecologies and cybernetics was taught as a seminar for master students of the Arts and Media program of the Universität Potsdam in Germany. We met regularly, reading, discussing and experimenting with bioacoustics and radio ecologies in many green spaces in Berlin such as the Prinzessinnengarten Moritzplatz and Hermannstrasse, the Gartenarbeitschule Wedding and the Floating University - where we also hosted a full day of live radio on 88,4 FM Berlin and 90,7 FM Potsdam. The students involved were Patrique Degen, Manuel Hoffmann, Dominika Majstrowicz, Giacomo Marinsalta, Jann Rasmus Petersen, Sophie Warmbrunn and Johanna Weber. We also had the pleasure of hosting the special guests Niko de Paula Lefort, Nica Bue, Felicity Mangan, Martin Howse, Constantin Engelmann and Till Boverman (PLONK), Martin Kuentz and HOOOOPS. 
Radio Otherwise workshops introduces transmission art as a way to understand radio as a natureculture marker, that is, radio transmission as a dialogical engagement with our environment.
Our proposals varies depending on the conditions. What we offer varies from soldering sessions building DIY transmitters and other electromagnetic sniffers to introdutions to field recording techniques, observation / listening experiments, transmission art installations,  community radio making in the field and in the studio, or bundles around a thematic related to environmental topics related to water, soil, plants and fungi, that can be complemented by critical readings, guest lectures...
We shared knowledge in schools, universities, festivals, events, project spaces.

We gather regularely for transmission events broadcasted live on the free radio band FM 88.4 in Berlin and 90.1 in Potsdam, and streaming on archipel.community, with whovever is interested for experimenting, talking, building, listening, recording, transmitting, receiving...
Thinking and doing radio otherwisemeans focussing beyond purely anthropogenic transmissions, recognising relationality within the spectrum of more-than-human radio ecologies: the sun's rays, lightning strikes, meteors, the radio memories held in soil from radioactive pollutants. It also means to research and reflect upon alternative histories and forms of radio-making through its complex materialities and multifarious aural traditions; special attention is paid to the spatial qualities of radio and radio-making, from experimenting with
nomadic outdoor studios, building small-scale transmission ecologies (Friz), to observing how the frequency spectrum is occupied in place of rich biodiversity (Krause).

Radio Otherwise promotes radio's emancipatory potential, inspired by pirate, free and community radios, as well as the MiniFM movement (Kogawa), and supported by decolonial and feminist literature and practices. It recognises the recent turn towards bioacoustics and the connected practices of listening as ways to re-connect with 'nature'. But the power dynamics of listening can be just as violent as those of 'the gaze'. Radio Otherwise brings listening together in a constellation with ecologies and cybernetics, in an attempt to carefully and critically move beyond the human/nature dichotomy, to deal with messy boundary-crossings in order to recognise situated relationalities with/in place; we seek dialogical relations with environments, through the development of 'media' as well knowledge sharing/making processes, encouraged by the boundlessness of radio's artistic and cultural expressions. In this way, listening and radio-making can also be methods to sit with uncomfortable relationalities, the relentlessness of the Anthropocene.



Kate Donovan is an artist and researcher working with radio, listening and the more-than-human. She means radio as an elemental, collective, and artistic medium.
Monai de Paula Antunes is an artistic researcher, transmission artist and radio-maker interested in complexity and communication together with their material, spatial and political entanglements. Her work hopes to decentralise and connect modes, sites and processes of knowledge-making and exchange, as well as expand perceptions on the environment, more-than-human intelligence and technology. By using radio to set up perfomative archives in different ways, she tries to restore and reinvent spatial and nonlinear qualities to navigation.
Based in Berlin, Niko de Paula Lefort works as sound artist. His practice covers the fields of music making (extended guitar and voice, modular synthesis...), instrument building, field recording and radio art installation. Also known as NikoLFO, he is a resident host on Archipel Stations Community Radio and co-founder of the record label Portals Editions.

M.K. = circuit wizard + radio tech library