A month-long celebration of radio and transmission art including performances, installations, radio broadcasts of commissioned works on CBC radio's Living Out Loud and the Radio Without Boundaries Conference. Featured artists: Götz Naleppa and Frank Kaspar (co-presented by the Goethe Institute-Toronto), Charles Stankievech, Gregory Whitehead, Andrea Dancer, Emmanuel Madan, Anna Friz, Rebecca Singh, Erik Laar, Shannon Cochrane and many more.
I've no doubt - radio is important to Canada and Canadians. The first thing that struck me was the shear number of stations. As well as the numerous, vaguely differentiated, commercial stations, there are community stations – First Nations, & Chinese, University Stations and CBC radio 1 & 2. I’ve not encountered any pirates yet. Canadians (well, Albertans at least) seem to spend allot of time in their cars and invariably listen to their radio when they are. Radio does seem to be the ambient medium of choice out here - a couple of times I’ve come back to someone’s empty house to find a tinny radio playing to itself (like in the Gaddis novel JR). Hopefully this festival and conference will help me understand the nature and history of this love affair better.
