Radio is my Bomb— Documentary

2013





Radio Is My Bomb
Video and Audio Piece, 8.12 minutes long

Radio Is My Bomb takes its name from the 1987 anarchist pamphlet of the same title. This pamphlet provided a format for much of the political pirate radio stations broadcast throughout the British Isles.

Modern media technology has failed to democratize society. Even in instances of counter resistance to the Culture Industry, the 'outside media' replicates the dominant. Radio is a public space which reaches a non-hierarchical audience, but whom can never interact with the medium.

Between 1987-1990 an instance of egalitarian counter-culture was enacted in Ireland. This instance has failed to become part of any media archive or to be remembered in the labour history of Ireland. Margaretta D'arcy ran a Womens Pirate Radio station from her home in Galway in West Ireland with rudimentary equipment and a drop-in, participatory system. Utilising both daytime and midnight broadcasts, D'arcy reached approximately 3km around her home. The materials ranged from political debates, anecdotes and even experimental use of soundscapes. The stations aura is now gone but reproductions exist in cassette form. These are archived in a language only D'arcy understands, as such without her the stations trace will disappear.

This video piece is guided by a binaural interview conducted in her house where the station was situated. D'arcy attempts to recall the various elements as she listens to herself 20 years on, fastforwarding and rewinding, operating on a system of recognition and forget. The video explores interiors and exteriors within its broadcast range, filling a temporary space with the ghost of the station and seeking out places and objects which illustrate the broadcast. The memory is convoluted by media and the source becomes an unreliable narrator.

'The 'motor' of history is technology rather than humanity.' (Siapera, 2011 p.10)


Previewed at Transition, Group Show in Mill Street Studios, April 2013