Kate Donovan

The MicroFM movement has its roots in pirate and free radio, with the fundamental goal of bringing communities together to democratise the airwaves against a backdrop of commercial dominance and governmental control. Many countries have or are currently transitioning from analogue to digital radio (DAB+ and internet streaming), with Germany set to do so within the next 5 years, yet the FM spectrum is still highly regulated. MicroFM refers to the low-power devices that do not require a license, making FM transmission accessible, relatively cheap, DIY, and able to foster collectivity and focus on the local.

We’ll look into the history of MicroFM, including projects dealing with access to the airwaves and anti-racism (Mbanna Kantako) and feminism (Margaretta D’Arcy), as well as key figures such as Tetsuo Kogawa. Theoretically, we’ll focus on notions of the “minor gesture” (Manning, 2016; Abdulla & Oliveira, 2023), and “emergent strategies” (brown 2017), bringing together notions of scale in terms of the social, ecological and more-than-human. Practically we’ll build MicroFM transmitters, experiment with various modes of small scale transmission and reception (including walkie talkies, transmitters for audio walks and guided tours), develop modes of listening and enunciating in dialogic exchange, and develop personal or group projects.

Amphibious comes from Amphi- (all around, on both sides), and -bios (life, way of living); we could say it means multiple worldings. Pauwelussen (2017) refers to amphibiousness as "the capacity to move in and between worlds that relate and partly intermingle, yet are not reducible to one another”. What kinds of worlds do we inhabit and what does it mean to move between them? How is it to move between the worlds of our daily lives and those of academic texts? How do we move through the worlds of different languages, cultures, environmental conditions?

We will read, discuss and think together on a selection of the multiple recent perspectives on amphibiousness: ontological amphibiousness (Aranda and Kirksey 2020); the concept of amphibious anthropologies in terms of human relations with watery landscapes (Gagné and Rasmussen 2016; Krause 2017; ten Bos 2009; Pauwelussen, 2017); amphibiousness as a way to work with structures and infrastructures that can adapt to various elemental conditions made more extreme due to climate change (Bruun Jensen 2017); media use and the notion of being at home across multiple platforms (Liu and Zeng 2022); amphibiousness in relation to personhood and queer self-making (Otu 2019).

Sessions will also include the use of live, transmission media as a way to explore being in multiple simultaneous worlds.

"Ideally, when we listen to radio we are listening to a listening medium. Radio listens through its microphones to the world, to human voices, to the environment." (Hildegarde Westerkamp, 1994:89)

This class will explore the plurality of experiences involved in radio-making in connection to ecological thinking. 'Radio' may sound anachronistic, but we will consider it in an expanded sense - not purely as a broadcast medium, but as an embedded aspect of contemporary (tele-)communications (mobile phones, WiFi, GPS, etc), and also as a natural phenomenon.

Learning basic audio production, and analogue and digital radio-making skills, we shall practice listening and "storying otherwise" (Haraway) by experimenting with different sound technologies and radio ecologies, with a special consideration for radio-making as a collective practice and shared listening experience.

Classes will include discussions of texts and artworks, workshops and exercises, field trips, and a final live-radio session to encompass the projects developed over the course of the semester.

Sessions will take place at the FHS Potsdam/Potsdam University, at the floating university, Prinzessinnengarten, and other urban green spaces in Berlin. (More details in the first session).

#listening #storytelling #bioacoustics #radio art #radio ecosystems #living archive #ecological thinking #collectivity