[spectre] RADIOACTIVITY, a podcast mini-series looking back into two seminal free radio stations – Radio Alice in Bologna and Radio Tomate in Paris

[Radio Web MACBA]

The RADIOACTIVITY <http://rwm.macba.cat/en/radioactivity-tag> podcast
mini-series looks into two seminal free radio stations – Radio Alice in
Bologna and Radio Tomate in Paris – as singular case studies in which
self-management, decentralised organisation and DIY coincide. The
mini-series is an introduction to the free radio movement that sprung up in
several countries in the seventies as a way of giving voice to actors who
were outside the media establishment: an alternative to the dominant
narrative that can also be seen as precursor of the horizontal rhizome
structure of digital networks.

*RADIOACTIVITY #1. Radio Alice. Interview with Franco Berardi*

Link: http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/radio-alice-franco-berardi/capsula

Born in Bologna, Franco Berardi is an activist and Marxist theoretician.
His work is a critical analysis of the media and its impact on capitalist
structures. Bifo's curriculum is proof of this inexhaustible interest in
the role of the media, not only because of the many works he has written,
but also through his involvement in numerous alternative dissemination,
education and communication projects, from the legendary Radio Alice, which
he co-founded, to the more recent telestreet movement and Orfeo TV channel.

*Radio Alice was a free radio project that was created in Bologna in the
late seventies by a group that brought left-wing activists together with
artists who worked with counterinformation, or what Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi
(one of the core members) called ‘the creation of divergent realities’*.
Perhaps to the surprise of the powers that be, the liberalisation of the
radio airwaves that brought with it the country’s first free and
non-commercial radio stations soon gave way to a local, short-range
guerrilla movement that ruptured the long, tedious monopoly of the state
media. Radio Alice was by no means the only free radio experiment in Italy,
but in spite of its short lifespan – the station initially operated from 9
February 1976 to 12 March 1977 – it had a strong influence on the social
and political life of the capital of the Emilia-Romagna region. Reflecting
the opinions, obsessions, and stories of its listeners and organisers, and
establishing itself as a creative platform in the new non-commercial radio
space, this small neo-dada bastion was an important piece in the jigsaw
puzzle of life in Bologna, eventually amplifying the voice of the popular
uprising and the clashes between students and the police in early 1977 (the
chain of events that eventually led the station to be shut down). The
strong personality of Radio Alice was more than just the sum of the points
of views of the original collective (Franco Berardi, Paolo Ricci, Filippo
Scòzzari and Maurizio Torrealta, among others). Rather, it can be seen as a
complex collage of the ideas of the autonomous movement (which emerged in
Italy in the sixties) mixed with the influence of the Situationists, the
pre-punk seed that was starting to spread in Europe, and the work of Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari.


*Timeline*
00:49 The Italian situation in the seventies
02:41 Information as diverging reality
06:27 The spread of free radio in Italy
08:54 Desire, punk, DIY ethics
11:56 Technology as a facilitator of new movements
14:55 Coexistence and conflict in Radio Alice
16:44 Financial and organisational issues in Radio Alice
17:55 A chronology of the fall of Radio Alice


*RADIOACTIVITY #2. Radio Tomate. With François Pain*

Link: http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/radio-tomate-francois-pain/capsula

*Radio Tomate has gone down in history as one of the main players in the
French free radio scene of the late sixties*, but François Pain is a direct
link between it and the situation in northern Italy during the same period.
Initiatives such as Radio Alice in Bologna were more than just the initial
spark for the French movement: the precarious technological infrastructures
(homemade transmitters) were also a result of the experience gained in
Italy in a few short but intense years of underground work. The interesting
thing about this comparison is the enormous difference between the legal
frameworks of the two countries. In the late seventies, Italy had freed the
airwaves, opening the doors to dozens of small independent broadcasters.
Meanwhile, in France, the first broadcasts by Pain and his collaborators
were totally illegal. Before François Mitterand came to power, and the
subsequent legalisation of private radios (a gesture that also gave a green
light to all kinds of non-commercial projects), Radio Tomate and similar
collectives operated completely underground. In this sense, they
effectively continued the work of pirate radios such as Radio Luxembourg
and Europe no. 1, which had successfully dodged government prohibition
since the mid-fifties, and had become popular beyond expectation.

Fruit of the (often conflictive) cooperation of a group of left-wing
militants, thinkers and artists, Radio Tomate was launched in 1981 with the
aim of encouraging a new notion of debate and an alternative form of
communication that revolved around the local area and the streets; as Félix
Guattari, who was an active member of the core team, put it:
'collective-individual reappropriation and an interactive use of machines
of information, communication, intelligence, art and culture.' Just like
Radio Alice, the first incarnation of Radio Tomate did not last long. Two
years after it began, due to police persecution and the chaos inherent to
its decentralised structure, the project was abruptly suspended. And, as in
the Italian case, the station's later iterations (until the start of
Fréquence Paris Plurielle in 1992) gradually moved away from the original
idea, from the mix of poetry and politics that made the first free radio a
radically different media experience.


*Timeline*
00:44 The birth of free radio in France
03:27 Organisation and dynamics of Radio Tomate
04:30 Guattari as a pivotal figure
06:26 Underground resistance
10:04 The Minitel experience
12:54 Conflict after the legalisation of free radio
15:58 The influence of Radio Alice

Note: This podcast is only available in French

Enjoy!
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