BEACON at MAD | Museum of Arts and Design
Radius is realizing itself as a beacon.
A fire, a light, a sound — a beacon is an event that is designed to be intentionally conspicuous. As it relays aural and visual signals, it reflexively attracts attention to the transmissions’ source and thus reaffirms its own position in space and time. Radio is inherently a beacon.
BEACON is Radius’s latest demonstration, which will be presented by the Museum of Arts and Design from September 14, 2017 until February 25, 2018, within the exhibition Sonic Arcade: Shaping Space with Sound. For this occasion Radius will showcase an audiovisual installation and broadcast of the Radius Episode Archive, as well as Episodes 81 and 82 — new commissions by Anna Friz and Deborah Stratman.
Since 2010, Radius has broadcasted 80 episodes, which have featured 197 artists from over 20 countries. In the museum gallery, printed ephemera from the Radius Episode Archive will surround Radius’s own beacon, the Audio Relay Unit. Simultaneously, each of these episodes will be transmitted throughout the run of the exhibition, within a comprehensive live-broadcast schedule that can be heard on 88.8-FM within the range of the museum property. Radius BEACON also includes a special monthly program by Wave Farm and additional programming by our partner organizations.
Radius Episodes 81 and 82 are new installations commissioned specifically for the Museum of Arts and Design’s presentation of BEACON. Episode 81 will feature Anna Friz’s Echophone, a sonic installation that responds to how radio incites relationships between distance and time. To experience this soundscape, Friz will encourage visitors to explore the museum with portable radios and headphones, and discover the various messages that will be broadcast from multiple beacons positioned throughout the Museum of Arts and Design’s interior. Additionally, Fritz will lead a performative version of Echophone in January 2018. Deborah Stratman’s Hearsay / Siege will be featured as Episode 82. This site-responsive installation will involve multiple sonic and video transmissions, which will be situated under the Museum of Arts and Design, at the Columbus Circle subway — one of the busiest MTA stations in the city. As a rejoinder to the audiovisual chaos of this public site, Stratman will offer a site-specific hack of its perceptual surface. Hearsay / Siege is scheduled to play in the Turnstyle Underground Market during the first seven minutes of every hour.
By utilizing the unique advantage of the multiplicities of place that are possible with radio, Radius BEACON will demonstrate the complexities of radio and its entangled and estranged network of senders and receivers. As a beacon, Radius re-imagines radio as a mobile medium, that can be both site-specific and mobile, private and social, ominous and celebratory.
