Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
87.7 FM, Cardiff
22-29 October
and
National Museum and Gallery Cardiff
6 December – 15 January
Reviewed by: Simon Holly
For one week in October, the residents of the Splott, Tremorfa, Adamsdown and Roath areas of Cardiff could turn their radio tuning dials to extreme left on the FM scale, and listen to a new radio station that they in turn had helped to create, write and produce. This was STAR Radio, its acronym deriving from these four districts, and these were their stories. For seven days it gave a voice to an area becoming increasingly marginalised in Cardiff itself, and a reference point in time for when the project is archived in the Museum Of Welsh Life.
Broadcasting from the STAR Radio base in Clifton Street, Adamsdown, this week of broadcasts was the culmination of six months’ research into the cultural fabric of the STAR area for the organiser Jennie Savage. There was no set agenda behind the project: this was the period for the reception and fruition of ideas. A choice selection of residents was not sought; participants volunteered, invited themselves, proposed their own ideas and received encouragement and support from the team. The result was a selection of diverse programmes intrinsic to the lives of the population of this largely post-industrial area.
In addition, sixteen Cardiff-based writers and artists were invited to respond and contribute to the project’s aims. By performing a number of roles that facilitated the project, Savage was able to literally channel two models of community together to create STAR Radio.
What ensued was a week of multifarious, eclectic scheduling that combined to embrace the range and possibilities afforded by the language of radio. Each daily broadcast consisted of both pre-recorded and live programmes. There was a song request hour, interactive guided tours, and local bands and DJs performed in the custom-built studio. Mike Kingston and Mike Chapman wrote One Night in October, a sci-fi zombie play set in the steelworks in Adamsdown. Anthony Shapland’s daily Wake Up Call slot at 7:30am roused the listeners awake with interviews with night workers. Simon Aeppli used Constellation Street and Orbit Street in Splott as a starting point for an investigation into the local residents’ relationship with the night sky. Sandwiched between each programme were ten second jingles written and performed by local schoolchildren and Matthew Lovett. Jingles are designed as a succinct distillation of the content and tone of a radio station: accordingly STAR Radio’s were characterised by the mercurial nature and the level of access that defined the project.
As an artist, Savage has long been concerned with notions of reality and identity through the perception of a place. In a previous work, Anecdotal City (2003), thousands of anecdotes and memories from people in Cardiff were archived to map out and construct a new materiality for the city. For me, the democratic model of community radio, where its audience are its principal creators, is both a logical and apposite form for Savage’s practice.
In the song Rock ‘n’ Roll (1970), Lou Reed wrote about a character, coincidentally called Jenny, whose ‘life is saved by rock ‘n’ roll’ the ‘one fine morning she puts on a New York station’. For Jennie Savage, the ideology is similar but less romantic. It is not just an alien voice that can offer validation; the sound of these familiar lives can too.
Compared to Cardiff’s Capital TV, a digital television channel “covering the City 24/7”, there was only one form of documentary in Cardiff in October that truly investigated beyond geographical and social borders and verified its inhabitants. That, pop pickers, was STAR Radio.
Writer detail:
Simon Holly
Venue detail:
STAR Radio
Clifton Street, Adamsdown, Cardiff
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