Tom Blog

Notes on the first Radio Project meeting, which happened on November 16th. Informal discussions with students have happened before this.

My friend Sofia brought up the idea of a student run radio station. It made sense to me as a way of harnessing any excess energy we have as students to learn to work/play collaboratively and reclaim our sense of power on campus.

tiny autotheory moment (WHY radio project?): I imagine collaborative creative projects outside of our curriculum to subvert the mechanisms of privatisation that occur on campus. There seems to be a tendency towards individual learning and working, towards individual scholarship, which may benefit the transformation of power that has been happening in universities over the last few decades. Neoliberal education, the kind of education institution that runs as a profiting enterprise, seems to benefit from a seperation of individuals, and between staff and students.

I imagined any collaboration outside of the “professionalising” marking criteria to be an achievement. Collaboration can be understood as a practice to reorient our value systems beyond building our individual career paths and towards connection with others, play and curisoty, and also solidarity and care. These are my personal goals of the radio station as a learning process for all participants involved. I also imagine the privatisation tactics of management having increased a sense of alienation on campus: students have less class time, tutors are overburdened with bureaucracy, and projects are not collaborative. I imagine the radio project could help us rebuild our sense of engagement with our university, to go beyond submitting digital assessments as part of our learning, but to work in the thickness of social relations, without this work constricted by enterprise ideology.

For this meeting, I decided to take more control in the discussion, leading the group towards building a structure of the radio show. This was a position which I previously resisted, imagining a more non-hierarchical way of organising, and feeling cautious of imposing my own ideas on a group. Given the vaporousness of previous meetings, and our collective silences, I felt the need to take leadership so that we can gain momentum in a certain direction. This fascillitation went well and I felt confident to try to gather the voices in a room and also build a clear direction.

Students were excited to share a space together outside of the dynamics of a lecture, or course workshop, since there were potentially less hierarchies between bodies in the room, and more of a chance to speak casually. Students were also very critical of our university’s policies and agendas, and keen to promote solidarity for the staff and eachother.

Notes:

Radio Project First Meeting Notes

November 16th, 2023

How can we make academic knowledge more accessible and more communal through discussion?

A LONG FORM CONVERSATIONAL PODCAST could have an ACADEMIC PERSPECTIVE but be ACCESSIBLE

We want to learn about the university process of privatisation, and get involved with other groups

Giving people voices, amplifying voices: interviews based on ethics of solidarity.

Episode ideas:

• Interviews on solidarity
• Submissions of audio
• Performances
• Discussions about Sound Art and Noise
• Women’s Sound

Do we want to DOCUMENT? Like having an archive, and using platforms like MIXCLOUD, or is that consumeristic. Do we want to promote impermanence instead? (LIVENESS)

Streaming options:

• Resonance FM
• Mixxx and MixCloud
• DIY Streaming, on our own website!

Notes on a website: with a website we can also publish articles etc.

FIRST SHOW: FIVE EPISODES, 30-60 minutes, 3-4 hours in total.

PILOT EPISODE, trying it out, experimenting.

Editors:

• SOLIDARITY HOUR: Tom, Jeremy, Jack
• SUBMISSION HOUR: Pedro
• PERFORMANCE HOUR: Mouse, Tal
• NOISE HOUR: Alicja, Jack
• WOMEN’S SOUND HOUR: Mouse Tal, Alicja
• Production: Tom and Jeremy

DEADLINE to submit a show: 7th of December.

NEXT MEETING: 5-7PM 7th of December

TO DO:

• Check Mixxx and RTM
• Check possibilities of making a website (Ben)
• Email Elephant Documentary maker (Rose)
• Check out Rupture Radio (based in LCC, from Journalist students?)
• Produce an episode for the deadline. Individual groups can meet together.
• Make a name proposal document. (Tom)

Further notes from Tom: I had a meeting with my project tutor today about the radio project, they are very excited about our ideas! We discussed how broadcasting live could add a lot of elements to the project, like making our sense of place on campus, adding spontaneity to the episodes etc. We thought W401 would be a good place to do this, Lou’s room, and maybe to try this out for the first show (pilot), and see what happens. People could still send in episodes recorded earlier, but the whole show could be broadcasted live and presented. I’d be happy to host the show with anyone else who would like to come along.

LaBelle on utilising the network for collectivising people. Sonic Agency, chpt 3.

LaBelle explores the tensions between our digital networks and political agency. He points out the intensity of the digital condition is due to a constant exposure to otherness. Digital media connects us to a chain of other bodies, cultures, identities and ideas, therefore extending ourselves into the network. The forces of this extension are both “internal” and “external”: as LaBelle points out, we have an innate curiousity for the “other”, in it’s disturbing nature, for the potential of connection or even love, while at the same moment we are pulled by algorithms to take part in cognitive labour and data production for the production of capital.

The algorithms used by digital mass media companies harness our desires for connection to take part in an endless stream of communications. LaBelle points out the “restless activeness” of this condition; the digital condition requires a “sheltering” and “commonality” that can protect us from exhaustion and instability. Yet at the same moment, we must expand our reach to the “other”, towards diversity, in a time of intense precarity and domination, where more and more humans are in need of care and resources.

LaBelle’s conclusions of this chapter propose questions about these tensions: that the network may decrease our prejudice, particularly if we disrupt regular patterns of consumption, and at the same time increase our need for sheltering and commonality, which can mean an isolation from that network. He asks how can we utilise the power of the network, to bring political democracies into global power structures? By structuring grassroots movements in the way our economies have been globalised, may we have a chance of resisting global capitalism?

LaBelle’s nuance in relation to the digital condition, that it is neither wholly bad or wholly good, inspires my ideas for the radio project. We want to use internet streaming for its accesibility and reachability. We also want to use UAL’s resources to fascillitate this streaming, so they can be burdened with any costs and euipment it may require. In alignment with LaBelle’s readings of “pirate politics”, we are looking for alternative streaming methods that do not rely on large streaming services. How can this theory of “squatting the network” by imagined in the form of the radio project at UAL?

Thoughts on my relationship to critical theory and the acadamic way of applying linguistic context to ? (existence?). These feelings relate to my second creative project, which is my music project. I believe in the potency of melody, as a nonlinguistic and magical storytelling.

obsession with something bad
grappling a waterfall with names
to tame and we say
philosophy is a coping mechanism, is inevitable
as we obsess over darkness

so the bright fantastic smiling flowers
go past in our naming
what about a heeding to the sweet bushes
hearing the laughing children
always blessing our earth
what about to practice a noticing
of love to drink it up to expand with it

there is a bad thing a bad feeling
sending us running into sadness
so let ourselves be sad
it’s not a problem. it doesn’t fail the other feelings.
a torch hovers over turning sides, let it turn!

There is much suffering and exploitation in our world. What does it mean to isolate suffering into the academic way?

a goal to decolonise the mind: dissolving a linguistic framework between our minds and the chaotic realms of other beings. I’m so excited to expand (away?) from the critical theory lens, an important method (it’s own dissolving practice), yet perhaps it’s limits are in the negative, the critique. The criticising tool is not enough to feel the chaotic realms of other beings. Along with terrible systems and evil energies there are fantastic beings and joyous energies, and caring systems. Opening.

I am not only “colonised”, I am also “coloniser”, depending on a situation. Not proudly but not always inevitably, which therefore requires learning critically. Standing crosswise in the circle of domination/dominated, as an active actor. solution: critical theory? or perhaps practices of loving kindness. both? like the radical theologists? agnostic spiritualities rooted in eco-social materialisms, light enough to shift and mould with other agendas and belief systems, hard enough to fight domination and ignite solidarity, a soft passivity that’s able to say “no” and act. honest love that acts with the full wavelength of our emotive capacities! shlove like a push and a shove.

the quest is to find a spiritual approach to being that is capable of critiquing and resisting colonialism, feudalism, privatisation (something major religions not only fail to do but also fascillitate and manage) while practicing love, and avoiding over-contextualisation. 🙂 :p

If we trust the human, then we can trust a capacity to understand and act without the methodologies of critical theory? not for the sake of comfort (“lazyness”), but for the softness of methods that loosen the linguistic projections. words are limited?

Sketch for a part of the radio project, which promotes solidarity in the form of interviews and discussion.

Live list of ideas of who to invite

Palestine society from SOAS
LatinElephant ~ local struggles on urban transformation in Elephant and Castle
Cleaners from the cleaner’s union ~ worker’s struggles on campus
Researchers from the Anti-university organisation ~ alternative models for education
lecturers from UCU ~ lecturer’s struggles on campus
Indira ~ started anti-racist group in Goldsmiths, was censored
Neoliberal Education 101 ~ Jonathan S. Davies & Adam Standring?

Notes on “The Invisible”, chapter three of “Sonic Agency” by Brandon LaBelle.

Research for Radio Project, title tbd … (beyond the face/rallyradio)

LaBelle discusses the complex dynamics of visibily, claiming that visibility is not a pure or objective position but a constant “negotation, a conflicting procedure.” In a constant mediation of our visibility we work out how to be seen and heard, or how to disappear, using our voice, gestures, media and objects that shape and modulate our position. Our dance with visibility forms an existential stress, where unknown forces affect our desires to be seen or unseen.

LaBelle proposes a turn towards to invisible to expand our agency. By focusing on the unseen, we may become receptive to the invisible forces that mediate our visibility, and we may discover forms of agency that utilises invisibility to our own advantage or that of others.

The ACOUSMATIC is the sonic invisible: the sound without a known source. The acousmatic realm forms an ethics for beyond the face, where we listen beyond the prejudice imposed through the visual realm. The acousmatic is a generative tool to undo the embedded or reactive impulses that support normalising structures.

LaBelle proposes a methodology of listening that foregos visibility to harness to potential of the invisible, that which may make clear the “psychis tensions of desire and meaning while providing a vehicle to elating to what lies beyond what we see… To oscillate as sounds do across multiple ways of knowing and sensing.”

Bla bla bla

LaBelle’s theories are technical in their use of language and terms, yet aim to unlearn the listening body to reopen to subjectivity.

Esotericism? The word “esoteric” is defined by oxforddictionaries.com as…
Intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest

The words of liberation for a few.

A few egoists defining themselves outside the normal tongue.

Or some erudites in fascination with their worlds.

The technical theory needs a few magic words to add to this pot of unlearning.

Demo map of Radio Project

3 hour show once a week, with four 45 minute episodes.

The four shows circulate between 8 individuals or groups connected to the university.

Each show has full agency over their topic and theme. A connection to critical analysis of neoliberal education, whether that is through direct commentary, joy or sillyness, is encouraged. 🙂

Once a week, a group of radio editors gather to compile the episodes, recording introductions between each episode for a sense of continuity. They also prepare next weeks by making sure all episodes are in the production process or planned.

Occasionally an episode is recorded live on campus and people are invited as an audience.

A variety of shows could include: Interviews,discussions, curation of sound and music pieces from students and workers in the university, DJ mixes, show by outsourced staff.

e.g Friday, 5-8pm.

Timeline (since this is an amitious project, it may take some time to build up to a three hour show)

• Find a working group of editors, curators and producers who want to be involved throughout the process. Perhaps we can reach out beyond the Sound Arts course.
• Establish a name, and a platform to publish the radio show.
• Begin with a deadline for the first show, perhaps it is two hours long, with three episodes, with two weeks of production time.
• Plan the next episode based on the previous experience.

Goals

• Each episode encourages collaboration in some way, to build connections, solidarity and collectivity on campus across different boundaries eg. student/worker/tutor/manager.
• Most production occurs on campus to build a sense of power and ownership in the space.
• Collaboration between students and workers, building connections through the university campus.
• Amplifying voices silenced in the university.
• Fun and enjoyable listening experience. 😛
• Learning DIY radio practices, and non-hierachical political practices in the production process.

When atoms come together they become a molecule.

Notes on two meetings in LCC, between students to discuss a potential for student actions on campus, that protest the commodification of our education.

So far we have gathered twice under an undefined consensus for student action. I organised the first meeting in response to student’s frustrations during the UCU strike at the beginning of this term, to imagine that we can gather with our frustrations, build solidarity and reclaim a sense of agency and power in the oppressive structures of our university.

I fascillitated both meetings in the way that I provoked questions, told people why I wanted to gather and asked different voices in the room to give their opinions and ideas. I took this role hoping that it can inspire a non-hierarchical organising and that it will move around the group in the future.

Most students are aware of the complexity of our current situation: the reason why tutors and cleaner’s working conditions are worsening is not because of an individual person or group necessarily, as the changes in our university system are entangled in larger changes in our society, goverments, economies and technologies. In the same thkning most students did not want to immediately act with anger in a disruptive protest. They also felt that for some students the campus may offer a sense of safety that they may not get elsewhere, and that we should be cautious to disrupt this safety. A common point that arose is that we need to gather more people to get a larger sense of how students would like to act collectively.

<I was surprised at my surprise at people’s abilities and remind myself to believe in the capacity of the human, and to submit to the potent capacity of a group rather than isolate myself in the priviledge and yet thinness of individual research.>

We discussed ideas of how to calmy express ourselves on the campus space and how to gather more people. During this process some students expressed a fear for being disciplined. Does this mean the techniques of surveillance coordinated by university management are affective in their psychological manipulation of our will and belief in our agency? Potential modes of discipline have varying effects on students since some students rely on a student visa to live in the UK.

Students were also feeling like they do not want to miss out on their education by focusing on politics. This is an interesting point. Can we promote the idea that a political approach to our time in university would be full of learning and expanding a sense of who we are? If our education has been “sold” by the enterprise of UAL, then isn’t poltical agency the only way to make use of our time in university?

I am unsure about the continuation of the meetings. The second meeting had three people. Many students are dealing with depression and cognitive stress: common psychopathologies of late capitalism. Many students are working multiple jobs, and these factors make political organising much more difficult. When we are made to rely more on digital technologies for communication, means being constantly absorbed into the excessive infosphere of the internet. Based on my observation of student experiences and what students brought up in the meeting, I feel that a student action should encourage sensuality, connection and a reclaiming of the university space. To use the campus for our own purposes (performance, discussions, activities outside of the curriculum) could give us a sense of self-ownership and control in our life, while learning the power of collectivity to continue elsewhere as we learn to live and resist through the intensities of our futures.