Spree ~ Channelsea Radio Group

A collaboration between Soundcamp CIC (England) and Archipel Stations (Germany), with Blanc Sceol / Surge Cooperative and Radio Otherwise

Image © AntennenOzeane. Archipel Stations X Radio Otherwise. Berlin. Summer 2021. Photo by Christoph Papendorf

“Between Moons brings together organisations with mainly local practices, to exchange approaches and tools for radio, live streaming, listening and environmental sound art. It will give time to approach the city in new ways, revealing the value and variety of relations around urban waterways, and their potential to elude definition, capture or development.” Grant Smith on behalf of Soundcamp CIC and Archipel Stations

Having worked together across several collaborations including three editions of the annual Reveil broadcast, As if radio…, a two week collaborative experiment with ecological activist radio during COP26 Glasgow and long-term environmental streams ongoing at Inhotim, Minas Gerais and Floating, Berlin, the partners developed questions around ecological radio/sound and its role in interventions across urban, social and media spaces. The Cultural Bridge programme enabled them to better understand each other’s regions, share and develop practices in response to ecologies and situations in each city.

Latest news

Spree~Channelsea Radio Group involved two week-long exchanges, on the Channelsea river in East London and the Spree in Berlin.

The exchanges set up a floating sound lab in each location, as a mobile platform to explore the social, organisational and environmental ecologies of the rivers, their shores and inter-tidal zones. During the exchanges they ran a series of live radio transmissions bringing the rivers and their people into contact.

The first exchange took place in July 2023 in London and the second taking place in Berlin in September.

In preparation for the in-person exchanges, the partners formed a remote reading group to develop their thinking together across the project and gradually establish lasting bridges between the vast networks of actors from both rivers.

The group met monthly at about the same time in each city. In Berlin, they are working with Zabriskie, an independent book shop with a history of hosting reading clubs. In London they have met at several different locations including the Lea Bridge Library and later at the floating Pier room, Hermitage Wharf, with the possibility to find other locations over time.

Find out more about Spree ~ Channelsea Radio Group on the project website.

Archipel Stations Community Radio is an itinerant web and FM radio occupying venues worldwide, from where events are broadcast and programs from elsewhere are transmitted live. It is a public-spirited platform that welcomes contributions and encourages participants to share their sound art, music, storytelling, writing, experiences, audio of artistic, ecological, educational, social or political content, or simply their situated knowledges in whatever form that does not endorse hate speech or oppression in any way.

Since 2020, it has housed interventions by Radio Otherwise, an offshoot artistic research project with the intention to deal more explicitly with radio in an ecological framework, including a focus on listening and cybernetics. This has involved the development of microFM transmitters for both installation and workshop settings, as well as collective, durational transmissions and site-specific works for radio.

Thinking and doing radio otherwise means focussing beyond purely anthropogenic transmissions, recognising relationality within the spectrum of more-than-human radio ecologies.

Follow Archipel Stations at archipel.community and radiootherwise.net

Soundcamp are an arts cooperative based at Stave Hill Ecological Park in South London. We coordinate the long-form radio broadcast Reveil (2014 –) and a series of sound and ecology events (soundcamps) on Dawn Chorus day each year. Our work appears as installations, workshops, publications and events. Research covers participatory audio technologies and live media for art–science and environmental advocacy.

Recent projects include: l a g – experiments with ecological radio: residency with Kate Donovan for Sonic Acts (2022); Acoustic Commons (2020-2022) for Creative Europe; As if radio.. (AIR) at COP26 Glasgow (2021).

Follow Soundcamp on Instagram, Twitter and at soundtent.org and acousticommons.net.

Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell and Hannah White) are an artist duo living and working in London, with a socially engaged practice creating performances, compositions and participatory actions. They use deep listening, somatic and ritual gestures, and live streaming to encourage creative and tangible action, on behalf of, and alongside, urban ecosystems.

In 2018 they co-founded Surge Cooperative on the Channelsea river in Newham, to build affordable moorings and advocate for river rights. Their research here seeks to live with, listen with and act with this vital ecosystem, finding new ways to tackle problems of neglect and misuse whilst navigating ancient acts of parliament to fight for the conservation of this waterway.

Follow Blanc Sceol on Instagram (link tohttps://www.instagram.com/blancsceol/) and at blancsceol.co.uk and Surge Cooperative on Instagram and at surge.coop.