Date:

28 February - 8 March

Venue:

mima

Time:

On-Air 24hrs
Launch:
Friday 29 February 19:00

Cost:

Free

On Air 24hrs on 87.7FM

The UK's only radio art station, Resonance FM, is relocating to Middlesbrough's mima for AV Festival 08. Ed Baxter, Chris Weaver and their team have devised a unique series of programmes that will be broadcast daily. Visit the live studio in mima's atrium during mima opening hours or tune in on air for the ten days of the festival.

Now here's something truly original in the radio jungle. The UK's first radio art station is relocating to the North East for AV Festival 08. London's acclaimed radio station Resonance FM will transform Middlesbrough's airwaves for ten days with a kaleidoscopic array of audio art. Resonance FM was set up by the London Musicians' Collective to provide a radical alternative to mainstream broadcasting. As David Stubbs of the Guardian noted, "Its oldest presenter is a 73-year-old ex-bank robber, its youngest a 15-year-old schoolboy. Its programmes span the outer reaches of music, sound art, polemic and comedy. It has no problem with being deadly earnest and deadly funny".

Resonance FM is relocating, lock, stock and microphones, to Middlesbrough's landmark gallery, mima for the duration of AV Festival 08. They will transmit strands such as AV Encyclopaedia, an attempt to catch hold of the entire festival's wide- ranging themes; a Radio Art Gallery, featuring classic radio art from all over the world; and Radio Routes, with young people from Middlesbrough acting as roving radio reporters. Highlights will include live versions of Antonin Artaud's To have done with the judgement of God to celebrate its 60th Anniversary, and on 5 March a special broadcast of the War of the Worlds radio play, to celebrate it's 70th Anniversary.

The radio studio is open during mima opening hours:
10:00-17:00 Tuesday - Saturday, Sunday 12:00-16:00. mima closed Monday (except Bank Holidays).

It is a great pleasure for us to relocate Resonance FM from London to Middlesbrough for the duration of the AV Festival 08. Between 28 February and 8 March we’ll be broadcasting every day during mima opening hours from this studio - a laboratory for audio arts. And we’ll have a 24/7 presence on 87.7FM in the city whether you can see us working here or not.

Do turn on: tune in: turn off: come back later: take a chance: join us.

AV Festival 08’s theme of “Broadcast” is something we feel Resonance has redefined in terms of approaches to radio content since its inception in 2001. It’s not just that Resonance has no advertisements, no news bulletins, no traffic reports and no weather forecasts: we think we’ve genuinely opened up the artistic and social possibilities of radio.

For AV Festival 08 and for mima we’ve concentrated on a handful of signature strands. Local radio makers, including the Radio Routes team and students from Teesside University, are providing us with material of their own choosing.

We’ve a strand of international radio-art – an amazing gallery of the airwaves. In our Works For Radio strand we’re foregrounding unapologetically arty material which suggests a type of radio beyond the accepted parameters of the mainstream. These range from visionary showman Orson Welles to tormented avant-garde genius Antonin Artaud, from audio explorers like Ian Breakwell and Wilem de Ridder to our own lopsided Resonance Radio Orchestra.

We’re also celebrating the contribution to AV Festival 08 of specially invited participants and those co-opted by dint of their continuing relevance to popular culture: Autechre, Chris Watson, Patrick McGoohan, John Cage and Knut Aufermann all feature on “heavy rotation.”

Finally, we’re well aware of the parasitical nature of much radio. It’s a cliché that “the pictures are better on radio” – one we’re tempted to expand to an all-encompassing “everything is better on radio”. So for those unable to attend the many AV Festival events in Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough itself, the substance of our final strand is the content of those other activities, the stuff we can’t get to see or hear in person. We’ve got live gigs, edited talks, vox pops from the great and the good, relays of installations and “takes” on the festival in our Encycolpaedia series. And we’re taking content from our fellow radio stations Soundscape FM in Sunderland and NE1FM in Newcastle.

Each day we’ll have printed schedules available at mima so you can keep track of what we’re broadcasting. And we’d like you to take part: join us on the radio, here and now.
We hope that from the vast quantity of new and deliberately untraditional radio that you’ll be able to hear, you’ll find something to make your listen to radio again as something new, exciting and accessible – something vital, engaging and above all user-friendly.

SATURDAY 8 MARCH 2008 SCHEDULE; the last day

It has been a great pleasure for us to relocate Resonance FM from London to Middlesbrough for the duration of the AV08 festival. Our final day of broadcast comprises the best of the material that we’ve generated here in Middlesbrough. Enjoy.

9.30am to 9.45am
Based on Paper
Fari Bradley interviews the curators of mima’s Based on Paper: the Marzona Collection.
9.45am to 10am
Dial a Diva
Nichola Hopewell reports from the exhibition by Zoe Irvine at the Central Library.
10am to 12noon
Feedforward
Join German sound artist Knut Aufermann and friends including Sarah Washington, Dinah Bird and JP, live from the Discovery Museum in Newcastle.
12noon to 12.30pm
Works for radio
Live radiophonic performance for multiple dictaphones by Preslav Literary School.
12pm to 12.30pm
Northern Soul: a Beginner’s Guide
Steve Keeley presents a guide to the definitive social phenomenon of the north-east.
1pm to 2pm
Feedforward
Live radio-art by Knut Aufermann, direct from the Discovery Museum, Newcastle.
2pm to 2.30pm
Radio Routes
Janniannes Show, a magazine programme made by pupils at Hall Garth School.
2.30pm to 3pm
Ormesby Lads, a new local radio show made by pupils at Ormesby School.
3pm to 3.20pm
Abandoned
A Mish Mash Production starring Tom Jones, Philip Mitchell and Ellie Malthouse. Made specially for AV08: Broadcast, this Write Your Own Radio Play project is an apocalyptic drama set in Middlesbrough. Recorded March 2 2008 at the Playing for Success Centre.
3.20pm to 4pm
Radio Routes Mashup
Middlesbrough’s Radio Routes team present an overview of local AV08 events, including the Screenwriters conference. Plus interviews with artists Vicki Bennett, Zoe Irvine and Geoffrey Semple whose works feature in the Now Hear This project in the Mall.
4pm to 5.25pm
Stuart Waterhouse interviews composer Michael Edgerton. Followed by a live recording of Edgerton’s A Marriage of Shadows, an AV08 commission performed at Middlesbrough Central Library on March 3 2008 by Ensemble Ars Nova and vocalist Angela Rademacher.
5.25pm to 5.30pm
Middlesbrough Central Square Fountain Feature
Five minutes of watery off-white noise recorded by sound-artist Chris Weaver.
5.30pm to 6pm
Atlas of Electromagnetic Space
Jose Luis de Vicente and Irma Vial talk to Chris Weaver about their work for AV08 Atlas of Electromagnetic Space, installed at Middlesbrough’s Institute of Digital Innovation.
6pm to 7pm
Found!
Durham University stand-ups UV and Wit Tank present a shipwreck of comedy. Recorded at the Institute of Digital Innovation. With Naz Osmanoglu, Michael Umney, Mark Cooper-Jones, Neil Wates and Donnachadh O’Conaill. Produced by Tom Besley.
7pm to 7.40pm
Ink on Paper Poets
Local poets perform works from the new mima/Mudfog Press anthology Ink on paper, inspired by art works in mima’s archive. Recorded live at the launch party in Café Prego, mima, March 6 2008. Plus interviews with some of the poets and public by Ed Baxter.
7.40pm to 8pm
Tillyer at mima
Stuart Waterhouse talks to Middlesbrough-based artist William Tillyer about his work, included in mima’s current exhibition Location & Situations: The 20th Century Landscape.
8pm to 8.50pm
Clear Spot
Stockton musician and enthusiast Geoff Spence presents a personal history of Middlesbrough’s punk and post-punk bands from the late 70s to the early 80s.
8.50pm to 9pm
Sketch for ‘S.O.B.’
A short radio-art piece recorded live in the Institute of Digital Innovation, written and performed by the Resonance Radio Orchestra (Christophe Alix, voice; Chris Weaver, electronics; Tom Besley, electric guitar, music box; Ed Baxter, turntable).
9pm to 10pm
John Cage’s Variations VII
Recorded live at Baltic, Gateshead on the gala opening night of AV08, February 29 2008. Performed by Atau Tanaka, :zoviet*france: and Matt Wand.
10pm to 11.15pm
Works for radio
New works for radio specially made for AV08 over the course of the last week.
11.15pm to 12midnight
Recorded live at Institute of Digital Innovation on the 60th anniversary of his death, French modernist maverick Antonin Artaud's classic and unprecedented 1948 radio-art rant is performed in the original French by Christophe Alix, with a new music setting by the Resonance Radio Orchestra. Contains strong language and ideas that are not for the sensitive. Music by Rhodri Davies (harp), Tom Besley (guitar, electronics), Chris Weaver (circuit bent electronics) and Ed Baxter (turntable).
Midnight
CLOSEDOWN
We bid farewell to Resonance at mima as part of AV08: Broadcast. Our thanks to everyone who has helped with this project, especially Knut Aufermann, JR Bowes, Andy Cartwright, Tom Cullen, Gavin Delahunty, Cheryl Evans, Honor Harger, Martin Hedley, Laura Hunter, Nichola Hopewell, Lloyd Nolan, Radio Routes, Kieran Weatherill, Godfrey Worsdale and Stuart Waterhouse. Special thanks to Adam Thomas.

Resonance 87.7 Fm was produced by Ed Baxter and Chris Weaver. Listen to us on-line in London on www.resonancefm.com - but for now, from Middlesbrough, goodnight and goodbye.

For more information on mima, visit visitmima.com
For more information on Resonance FM visit: resonancefm.com