Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla


 
 
Radio Re-Volt: One Person.ooOneWatt
December 2003-October 2004

This project originated from a desire/idea to match and contest the wattage of the most powerful radio broadcasting company of the Twin Cities: Clear Channel. Operating with over 50,000 watts, the Clear Channel’s broadcasting power dominates the airwaves—a public domain by definition—in Minneapolis and St. Paul with nationally syndicated, homogeneous programming. One Person.ooOne Watt was a sculptural/media intervention with an activist spirit that attempted to redistribute, reorganize, and redirect the radio transmission potential of the Twin Cities by creating a decentralized and diversified network of radio stations.

Radio Re-Volt Workshops
In a series of free radio workshops held throughout the Twin Cities, participants created radio sculptures using preassembled microradio transmitters (with “narrowcasting” potential of about one-block radius) provided by the Walker and were also introduced by the Walker staff to issues of media ownership as well as to basic technical skills of operating the radio. Once the radio sculptures were created, the participants took the ownership of programming. While approximately 500 microradios were created during the project’s run, the project was conceived, ideally and theoretically, to continue on by workshop participants’ individual initiatives until the collective and cumulative wattage of microradios would match the broadcasting power of the Clear Channels’ transmitters.

University Avenue Broadcast
On Thursday, October 28, 2004 over 40 businesses, organizations and community centers in Minneapolis and St. Paul became their own radio stations as they participated in the University Avenue Broadcast using micro-radio transmitters distributed by members of WACTAC and Walker staff. . . .

Artists' Statement

"If the broadcasting power of the most powerful radio station in the Twin Cities is 100,000 watts, we propose a network of micro-radio transmitters that can cumulatively match this power. A movement should be set into motion in the spirit of decentralization and diversity in ownership and programming of the radio waves. Radio Re-volt!"—Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla

Media

Related Links & Events

Biographical Information

Jennifer Allora (b. 1974, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b. 1971, Cuba) have been working together since 1995. They live and work in Puerto Rico, a hybrid Caribbean culture with a colonial legacy that continues to flourish in the present day under the fragile auspices of the United States. Despite...

 
 

2003