Kunstradio

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Founded in 1987, KUNSTRADIO is a weekly program on Österreich 1, the cultural channel of Austrian National Radio, ORF. Conceived as a space for radio art - i.e. an art that reflects the radio medium itself - this weekly program has almost from its beginnings become much more than just that: one of its main functions became that of serving as a point of access for international visual artists, media artists, composers, writers to both the production- and transmitting means of the ORF and the international exchange and cooperation infrastructure of National Public Radio worldwide (mainly through the Ars Acustica group at the EBU).

Artists - sensing, before many of the broadcasters inside the big broadcasting organisations did, the fundamental changes digitalisation, the convergence of media and especially the rapid proliferation of the internet imposed on the medium of radio - made very innovative use of these access potentials of KUNSTRADIO, which also included the facilitation of collaborations between international artists and with the rich world of radio-art as produced outside the big institutions, e.g. in independent university and cooperative radios or by independent artists' initiatives.

In 1995 a group of artists created KUNSTRADIO ON LINE as a means of announcing and archiving the weekly program and as an additional site of radioart. In 1996 KUNSTRADIO ON LINE started to stream not only the projects scheduled for the weekly program-slot (especially the increasing number of live projects) but also the occasionally very long or even potentially unending on line elements of innovative complex networked radio-art projects which soon started to be named "on air - on line - on site" to characterise the complex context they were created for and unfolded in - in some cases at an astonishing number of real and virtual networked locations/channels around the world and with the participation of many international artists. The relatively easy access to possibilities to stream resulted in a shift from performance- to installation- oriented work.

KUNSTRADIO has also encouraged artists' reflections of the historical roots of radio art, of the combination of old and new technologies, (routinely offering also the use of short- and mediumwave broadcasting), the ramifications of the changed definitions of the concepts of author as well as the work and the role of the listener/recipient, the transference of knowledge between collaborating artists/technicians/producers/ theoreticians. Recently KUNSTRADIO has invited artists to curate series of radio-art projects, thus delegating part of its curatorial responsibility to artists.

KUNSTRADIO has also organised international symposia/exhibitions,projects in public space and has published catalogues and CDs. It frequently collaborated/coproduced with festivals, galleries and artist run spaces, as e.g. Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Musikprotokoll/Steirischer Herbst, Graz, L'Arte dell'Ascolto, Rimini, The Western Front Society, Vancouver, Send & Receive Festival, Winnipeg and many others. (Source)

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