[spectre] Tjebbe van Tijen: Radiodays in De Appel: Amnesia or Arrogance?

[Geert Lovink]

> From: Tjebbe van Tijen <t.tijen at chello.nl>
> Date: 23 March 2005 4:23:35 AM
> To: nettime-nl at nettime.org
> Subject: [Nettime-nl]  Radiodays in De Appel: Amnesia or Arrogance?
>
> For three decades this town - Amsterdam - has developed and sustained 
> a free radio practice, starting with the Vrije Maagd (free virgin) 
> from the occupied headquarters of the university in 1969 and the Radio 
> Sirene and Radio Mokum a few years later related to the neighbourhood 
> actions in the Nieuwmarktbuurt, evolving from radio as a mobilizing 
> and coordinating tool in political action to a diverse mix of cultural 
> and political content. Just from the top of my head station names come 
> to my mind like WHS Radio, Papatoe, Rabotnik, RVZ Radio, Radio Twist, 
> Vrouwenradio, Vrije Keizer, Radio GOT, Radio Kankantri, Staatsradio 
> and one of the most prolific and enduring stations: Radio 100. Some of 
> these initiatives also took part in the relative short period of free 
> television...
>
> Many of these stations were experimenting with what radio could be 
> when freed from the burden of broadcast tradition and commercial 
> interest. Most of these initiatives stayed on the air for many years 
> by the daily creative and supportive input of hundreds of volunteers 
> and listeners, thus creating a creative realm where the distinction 
> between radio producer and radio consumer often faded...
>
> Official radio and television soon discovered these free ranging media 
> laboratories and started to pick fresh talents from their core groups 
> to inject new energy in their sclerosised structures.
>
> Instead of being supported, most of these initiatives have been 
> chased, persecuted and criminalized by local and state authorities. 
> Freedom of expression for broadcast media have been curtailed from the 
> very beginning, constitutional rights do hardly go beyond the culprit 
> and the printing press. For a decade or so some halfhearted 'open 
> channel' options were given under the tutelage of a non-elected 
> foundation (SALTO), but it all ended in a debacle when frequencies 
> were auctioned and sold and slowly most of these free initiatives were 
> pushed out of the aether while some manage to survive as streaming 
> radio on the Internet.
>
> Now when I read the announcement of "radiodays in De Apple" as posted 
> on the nettime-nl list by Geert Lovink, the only - unintended - trace 
> of this rich history with a sad ending is the email address of the 
> moderator of this list Menno Grootveld: rabotnik at xs4all.nl --- 
> RABOTNIK being once one of the pioneers of  "Dutch "Radio Art" .
>
> On the impressive name list of persons, groups and organizations I 
> hardly recognize anything that links back to the aforementioned local 
> history. Have all those people involved died the moment they have been 
> pushed out of free radio space? Could their pioneering work at least 
> not be mentioned in a few  words, some kind of homage to their courage 
> and endurance? Why is it not mentioned as a necessary part of such a 
> manifestation?
>
> What makes the curators of De Appel dance on 'the grave of free radio 
> history' as if nothing creative in the field of radio ever happened in 
> this town called Amsterdam? Was all of it below their standards of 
> what can be classified by the word "Art"?  Or, do they simply not 
> know?
>
> Did they never check? (say just google "free radio" + Amsterdam to get 
> 11.600 hits or "pirate radio" + Amsterdam good for 12.200 hits)? Did 
> they never search some libraries (30 books of secondary literature on 
> pirate radio at the University Library Amsterdam) ... or did they not 
> think about the option to search the collection of the International 
> Institute of Social History... just the simplest possible search with 
> the word "radio"  from the search option at their home page gives 1896 
> matches in 664 files ( http://www.iisg.nl ) with hits like "Vrije 
> Keyser Radio archief; or "Etters in de ether" (mischiefs in the 
> aether, a sublime documentary overview by Cor Gout of 20 years Dutch 
> free radio made in  1992); or the Staatsradio, Radio X and Papatoe 
> audo archive deposited in 1993; the archive of the magazine "de 
> Zender" (the emitter) of the eighties donated by Eef Vermij; a dossier 
> with leaflets from the period 1989-1991 when Radio 100 was taken "from 
> the air" and went back again; several cassettes from the early radio 
> work of Willem de Ridder; the archives of the Next 5 Minutes 
> conferences on tactical media in Amsterdam in the nineties, orthe 
> archives of Europe Against the Current manifestation in 1989 with many 
> free radio initiatives....
>
> When I understand it well the manifestation is a kind of 'school work' 
> or more nicely said "curatorial training program"... but as the 
> student curators maybe do not know those things (they might not even 
> have been born when free radio was raging in this town, or too young, 
> or from another part of the planet) there must be someone around who 
> is from this town, who knows something about its fuzzy and convivial 
> history to put the students on the right track...  how else can these 
> curators 'in-spe' learn something. Nothing of that all seems to have 
> happened!
>
> Is this blotting out of the local context historical amnesia or 
> professional arrogance?
>
> When will the well established cultural institutions that support this 
> manifestation recognize their failure in the past  in supporting local 
> media talents?
>
> When will the authorities that cleansed free radio space apologize for 
> the injustice they have done?
>
> Tjebbe van Tijen 23/4/2005