Tag Archives: Datscha Radio

Open Call: The Gardens of Gyumri. 25.09

Open Call Datscha Radio // Բացեք զանգը Դատչա Ռադիո

The Gardens of Gyumri

In a few seconds they passed.
In agitation and crisis they passed // In sorrow and grieving they passed.
They left and the years passed// adding happiness to pain.


Arshalouys Markarian: Years

Excerpt from „The Other Voice. Armenian Women’s Poetry through the Ages”.
Translated by Diana Der-Hovanessian. AIva Press 2005

In the Taxi on the Road to Gyumri I ate the one and only apple I had brought with me from my Berlin garden. The taste was fresh, sour and sweet, and it mingled at the back of my palate with the aroma of exhaust fumes and dusty blankets. As a visiting artist from Germany, a stranger to the local communities, I feel immensely touched yet distant from the history of Armenia and the devastating earthquake in 1988. Now I live in Mush 2, one of the largest districts following the destruction of this city. My view goes out to new houses, old mountains and a small garden plot, fenced with a stone wall and used car tyres. Always, always, there will be something growing.

Datscha Radio is a nomadic garden radio project maintained and organized by Berlin artist and traveler Gabi Schaffner. ­­
Datscha Radio’s idea of gardening comprises the notion of gardens as a part of our cultural heritages. In the case of the Armenian project, this notion is extended to employ the arts and gardening as valuable strategies to grow resilience by taking care of one’s surroundings – be it plants, water, soil, housing or family.

Datscha Radio invites you to contribute to ­­“The Gardens of Gyumri”, celebrating the joy of connecting to each other: on site, on air and online. 

Together with our guests and participants, we will broadcast live on Sunday, 29th of September at a time yet to be fixed. We will also rev­ive the tradition of micro-broadcasting. The program will present talks and readings, concerts, sound art, and it will be organized in cooperation with the Art Basis platform and the Gyumri Branch of State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia. 

Since this radio station is ‘home-made’, an experiment and absolutely non-commercial, please understand that we will not accept mainstream music or mixes. Instead:

We are curious about

  • Local knowledge about fauna & flora, ecology and the art of cooking
  • Poetry/conversations relating to neighbourhood, friendship and family, grieving & recovery
  • Sound art, field recordings and playful approaches to radio
  • Traditional music and songs
  • When interested to perform live, please send 100 words about your set.
  • When interested to do live cooking or share recipes, please send a note about what kind of dish you have in mind
  • Your very person: Come and create radio!

Deadline: September, 25, 2024

Languages: EN, ARM, RU

  • The English language is NOT mandatory!
  • You may send spoken word contributions or information about your work also in your native language
  • Don’t feel shy, there will be translators to help me understand.

Your contributions

  • Please send your sound contribution as mp3 ONLY (preferably 320 mbits)
  • label your tracks: firstname_lastname_title_min (minutes)
  • include a pdf with <100 words about your piece and your person
  • put Gyumri Gardens as subject line
  • send the link for your works to info@datscharadio.de or your files directly via wetransfer et al.

Note: You must own the (copy)rights of your production, be it sound or writing!

How to listen
You can listen online on datscharadio.de and selected radio stations to be announced in due time
You can listen on site (the location of the studio in Gyumri has not yet been decided on, but will be published soon on our social media channels and on datscharadio.de) We are fond of an open studio situation: performers, spontaneous live guests and visitors are welcome.

Sustainability
A For Datscha Radio, sustainability is not defined by the universal availability of replicable products, but by the experience of togetherness and local knowledge that is remembered and translated into a shared future.

B You are heartily invited to take out your old radios from their closets and experiment with analogue reception in the station’s vicinity.

Fees
Datscha Radio works on a non-commercial basis, therefore we cannot reimburse you for your valuable time and work. What we have to offer is a radio station and art platform for discovery, exchange and networking. In the off-line world.

Copyrights
All copyrights stay with the artists. For more information about the project, please see datscharadio.de

For any questions, please write to: info@datscharadio.de
Facebook: datscharadio.de || Insta: datscharadio


Text: ©Gabi Schaffner; Image: Armenian ornament, free license.
#culturemoveseurope #goetheinstitute Brussels #artbasis

­

“Das reisende Gartenradio” on Ö1, July 25

Datscha Radio is pleased to announce a new radio production for the Austrian Broadcast Station Ö1

Kunst zum Hören presents:
The Traveling Garden Radio
Thursday 25th 2024, 11:03 pm

Lan: DE; EN
Supervisor: Elisabeth Zimmermann

Gabi Schaffner has created two 20-minute collages for Kunst zum Hören. The first takes us to Altenburg in Thuringia in the summer of 2023, where Datscha Radio sent its field research into the ether several times.
The second block dives into geographically more distant horticultural
worlds of sound. A conversation between Elisabeth Zimmermann and the artist will provide further insights into the traveling garden radio and the practice of world gardening.

For more info/text/more about “Kunst zum Hören” as well as for listening to the show, please go to: https://oe1.orf.at/programm/20240725/765587/Ein-Garten-zwischen-Giesskanne-und-Mischpult

Credits

Datscha Radio in Altenburg

Team: Gabi Schaffner, Ernst Markus Stein, Helen Thein

Beiträge: Spaziergang zur Elisabethquelle – Wolfgang Paritzsch; Der Historische Laubengarten – Grit Martinez und Chris Junk; Gärten in der Ukraine – Gartengemeinschaft Einheit.

Gartengeschichte in Altenburg – Christine Nienhold; Unser Gemeinschaftsgarten – Anonym; Licht und Sterne – Frank Vohla; Laubengang – Gabi Schaffner, Ernst Markus Stein.

Marmeladenverkostung – Gartengäste; Bodenspuren – Marcus-Andreas Mohr; Zieräpfel – Tina-Marie Friedrich; Apfel-Boccia – alle; Gärten der Zukunft – Grit Martinez.

Open Call Tracks: Apfel Birne Quitte – Tiger Stangl; Samensinfonie. Aus dem Leben eines Kerns – Ian Joyce, Tiger Stangl

Musiken/Sampling/Mixe: Ernst Markus Stein. Jingle Streuobst unter Verwendung von „Frau Holle“ – Goldmarie

Field Recordings: Gabi Schaffner

Datscha Radio International

Datscha Radio Ii, 2022

Team: Tina- Marie Friedrich, Gabi Schaffner

Beiträge: Towards Atmospheric Care – Hanna Husberg und Agata Marzecovas; Kilimandscharo – Inari Virmakoski; The River Ii Bridge – Tina-Marie Friedrich; Weather Changes – Heli Paaso-Rantala; Cloud Engineering – Filips Stanislavskis

Open Call Tracks: Love is in the Air – Jaakko Autio; On The Inhale – Elisabeth Shores

Datscha Radio Taipei, 2019

Team: Gabi Schaffner, Gabriel de Seta

Beiträge: Waste Culture – Margareth Shiu/Bamboo Curtain Studio, Mark van Tongeren, Hauyu Yang; Listening Culture – Laila Fan; Praying Machine Hacks – Lu Yi mit Gabriel de Seta; Listening Culture Reprise – Laila Fan

Musiken: Sea Waste 7.0 – Ken Yu; Praying Machine – Lu Yi

Field Recordings: Gabi Schaffner

Datscha Radio Madrid, 2018

Team: Gabi Schaffner, Maite Camacho/InSonora Artist Collective, Victor Jara/MediaLab Prado

Beiträge: Esta es Una Plaza – Alberto Peralta; Plant Sensor Music – Joaquin Diaz, KTA Martin; El Hospital de las Plantas – Óscar Domínguez mit Eva Kurly; Retiro Garden – Daniel Horcajo; The Batan Community Garden – Irene Prins

Musiken: 9 Olas – Carolina Carubba; Plant Music – Joaquin Diaz, KTA Martin; Atomic Garden – Alberto Garcia.

Freshly printed: Datscha Radio in Altenburg

Freshly printed: Datscha Radio’s documentation about Radio Gardening in Altenburg. 32 pages. 2023. With contributions by: Gabi Schaffner, Grit Martinez, Helen Thein, Luise Krischke (Fliegender Salon). Graphic design: tigerworx. Radio art concepts: Ernst Markus Stein, Gabi Schaffner, Helen Thein.
Number of copies (Datscha Radio): 250; (Fliegender Salon) 250.

Our Altenburg adventures include the chapters:

  • Sommergartenradio (30. Juni 2023) – Summergarden Radio
  • Laubenlauschen (3.-6. August 2023) – Listening to Arbours
  • Streuobstradio (1. Oktober 2023) – OrchardFruitRadio
  • Der Fliegende Salon: “Experimentierfreude im Fokus”
  • Summary in English
  • Radiorezepturen – Radio Recipes

All participating artists and gardeners are invited or order or fetch their personal copies. An online PDF will be available soon! For Berlin/international artists: please write to info(at)datscharadio.de.

Open Call: ‘OrchardFruitRadio’

From 2 to 6 pm on Thanksgiving Day, October 1, 2023, we will be broadcasting directly from a Thuringian orchard. What is this sound of apples dropping into the wet grass? Of the spores floating amongst pollen and dirt? What recipe did your grandma use for her plum jam? What are sounds of the pleasures of harvesting the goods of the garden? Datscha Radio wants to find out – and needs your radiophonic autumn treasures!

If you want to contribute please find all infos here:
https://datscharadio.de/en/blog/2023/08/orchardfruitradio-open-call/

Waste Culture on Common Waves

Pleased to announce that since November 1 Datscha Radio will be broadcast within the frame of the COMMON WAVES festival.

Super pleased also to find ourselves among long-standing friends, colleagues and collaborators. Please have a look at the schedule.
My personal thanks to Ute Seitz!

Common Waves is an International Radio Collective launched during Tbilisi Architecture Biennial 2020. Along the theme of the Biennial “What do we have in common” we will explore the different layers of common spaces – public, collectively organised or imagined spaces of community.

How do we share spaces? What defines the public areas around us? How are they built and what do they sound and look like? Do they serve the needs of communities or individuals, companies or states? Who decides how we move and act in our cities? How can we design open spaces that allow creativity and diversity?

Our answers to these questions may be artistic, activist, professional, transdisciplinary, historical, local, global, subversive or emotional. We believe in the power of independent radio to voice diverse perspectives and promote experimental approaches – even more so in international cooperations. This is why our collective is formed by various community and artist radios, podcasters and individuals.

The Common Waves Collective will produce and curate interviews, documentaries, sound art and DIY radio formats during Tbilisi Architecture Biennial 2020 and beyond.

Nachtgartenkosmos 4 Cashmere Radio

It is unusual enough to broadcast from a garden, creating a studio situation exposed to the immediate surroundings like weather, temperatures and background sounds. With “Nightgardening” In 2019, Datscha Radio took its experimental approach to the garden as a matrix for self-organization, autopoiesis and ecological radio art, even one step further. How can we approach the audible ecospheres of the night, what stories can be told, what fragrances turned into frequencies?

The compilation presents a mix of excerpts taken from “Plots & Prophecies” (2017) and “Nightgardening” (2019), followed by palimpsests and passages from Datscha Radio’s 2020 iteration “Listening to the Universe”. This latter event, happening from the 11th to the 13th of August, was dedicated to the Perseides’ meteor showers. Talks and readings, concerts and performances revolved around themes like sonification, storytelling, and cosmic relations in the so-called Anthropocene.

Credits

Datscha Radio: Nachtgartenkosmos

A radio(art) collage by Gabi Schaffner.
Length: 51:48 min
A commission for Cashmere Radio

List of participating artists and titles of their contributions
in order of their appearance

I What happened before

  • Intros Datscha Radio from the 2017 festival “Plots and Prophecies”
  • Body Garden Experiment by Kerry Morrison, read by Kate Donovan + Rosanna Lovell in conversation with Gregor Kaspar (Cut up)
  • Carolina Carubba: Kalimba Rain. Datscha Radio Madrid, 2018

II Nightgardening

  • Lukatoyboy: 7“ Bird Vinyls
  • Marold Langer-Philippsen: Maschkera (Excerpts)
  • Cutup: Niina Lehtonen-Braun: Iltakahvit + Kat Austen: The Beetles’ Harvest Supper
  • Niki Matita, Walter Schulze: Secret-en-plein-aire  (Excerpt)
  • Kate Donovan: Gratitude Ritual 
  • Peggy Sylopp with Gabi Schaffner: Dämmerungsspaziergang

III Listening to the Universe

  • Jingle Universe (Helen Thein)
  • Ally Bishop: Possible Vehicles for Time Travel
  • Kate Donovan with Sasha Engelmann: Satellite Séance
  • Tiger Stangl: Milchstraße links unten
  • Vladimir Kryuchev: Nye Sbylos (Some Dreams Never Come True)
  • Jasmina Al-Qaisi and Helena Otto „To the Belly and Back: Star Taste“ (Excerpts)
  • Elo Masing: Day Sky Improvisation +| Gabi Schaffner: Cosmogonic Storytelling I (Mix!)
  • Gabi Schaffner: Satellite Signals/Der Schweigende Stern
  • Tim Schleinitz and Helen Thein: GDR Science Fiction Movies + Niki Matita/Elo Masing: Nativitas (Cutup) + Tiger Stangl: Ein Stern geht auf (Backdrop, modified)
  • Ela Spalding: Moonrise Reflection / Gabi Schaffner: A Walk between Bamboo and Ghosts (Backdrop)
  • Marta Zapparoli (and Kate Donovan): Echoes from Outer Space
  • Sarah Washington: Datscha Owl, Datscha Radio Jingle 2012

Selection, editing and additional sounds: Gabi Schaffner, 2020

Listening to the Universe – Radiophonien des Alls

Listening to the Universe – Radiophonien des Alls  

A radio art festival by Datscha Radio.
Realised by Gabi Schaffner, Helen Thein, Kate Donovan and Niki Matita

Every year in August, the Northern Hemisphere’s night sky is graced by meteor showers – the Perseids. Datscha Radio used this astronomical spectacle as the departure point for a 48-hour festival of radio art, from moonset at 2:04 pm on August 11, until 2 pm on August 13, 2020. 

Datscha Radio – a non-commercial, independent, nomadic and interdisciplinary Berlin radio art initiative – has been engaged in expanding the culture of radio creation since 2012. It aims to create new listening experiences beyond the dichotomies of culture/nature and sender/receiver. It is transmitted from an allotment garden in the north of Berlin. 

“Listening to the Universe – Radiophonien des Alls“ was dedicated to themes and music inspired by the phenomenon of the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle.

With a broad spectrum of topics – from cosmogonical myths to the signals of meteor detectors, from starlight-inspired violin improvisations to experimental horoscopes – Datscha Radio traced the path of these ‘falling stars’ to their manifestations in space and matter as the fictions and artistic responses that are bound up with them. 

A documentation of our shows will be uploaded on mixcloud in due time.

In A Nutshell

Für die Eröffnung des neuen Sendestudios des frbb am 31. März 2020 im Haus der Statistik am Berliner Alexanderplatz hat Datscha Radio die 10-minütige Radioklangkollage „Datscha Radio in a Nutshell“ beigesteuert, die auf datscharadio.de nachgehört werden kann.

Listen Here: datscharadio.de

Komposition und Bearbeitung: Gabi Schaffner 2020. Länge: 10 min
Mit #NikiMatita#KateDonovan#Ryan McFadyen #Frieder Butzmann #MichaelaSchimun#gabischaffner#UlrikeStoehring#SarahWashington#CatherineLee#Yi-ChunLiu #MabelWang#Ming-ChunCheng #RomiCasile#AlbertoGarcia#EvaKurly#BerlinerChorSinglust#HannesWienert#MimosaPale, #FXSchroeder#kateraugustin

Radio Seed Bombs

On the evening of the award ceremony, Datscha Radio will release three radiophonic loops at Humboldthain Club, that can be captured on site with radio receivers.
“Radio Seed Bombs” is an acoustic cross-pollination and self-fertilization in one, conceived by radio artists Kate Donovan, Niki Matita and Gabi Schaffner.

“In “Seed Dispersal”, Kate Donovan explores the sounds and stories of various seeds on their journeys through water, air, and bodies: a cosmos of dispersal, told in radio snippets and sent upon a breeze. With sounds and voices from Pablo Juanes; Molly, Hunter & Scout.

Niki Matita presents “Babosa”: Eine Erkundung der Welt jener ungeliebten Gartenbewohnerinnen, die in vielen Menschen Ekel und Unmut hervorrufen. Niki Matita untersucht, ob, und wenn ja wozu, Nacktschnecken nützlich sein können, welche kulturelle und spirituelle Bedeutung ihnen zukommt und welche Abhilfe es gegen sie gibt.

With “Gymnospermia”, Gabi Schaffner will broadcast an illustrious potpourri of Sicilian fruit descriptions, seed sounds, lawnmower microsymphonies, and tiny garden soundscapes in fourteen miniature compositions. With the voices of: Paolo Cavarro, Hans Kellet, Dirk Heiden, Kate Donovan and Margarita (courtesy Romila Casile)

The Garden Calls

From sunset to sunrise, 8:46 pm on the 8th of August, until 5:39 am on the 9th of August, 2019, Datscha Radio will be broadcasting directly from a Berlin allotment garden in Treptow.
What is this sound, soft as perfume, permeating the frequencies of our presence? Datscha Radio wants to find out – and calls for your radiophonic input.

Deadline: July 15, 2019
More Info: Datscharadio.de

Datscha Radio receives Award for Artistic Project Spaces and Initiatives

Datscha Radio has been honoured with a prize for artistic project spaces and initiatives. The State Secretary for Culture, Dr. Torsten Wöhlert, has awarded a total of 20 initiatives, which were nominated by an independent
jury. An endowment of 37,000 euros will be awarded to each project. The award ceremony will be held on the 13th of September, 2019, as part of the Berlin Art Week.

Symbioses – The Radio as an Imaginative Body

Catalogue Contribution
40 pages, illustrated, bilingual. Besides being one of the authors I also acted as an editor, translator and part-time graphic designer for this most recent Datscha Radio documentation. Co-authors: Kate Donovan, Niki Matita, Verena Kuni, Suki Shanti Osman, Rafik Will. Layout: Susann Richter

“Merde – C’est une belle chose” – the radiophonic opening of our second radio day began with a quote from Alfred Jarry and a contemplation of this special mass by the artist Kerry Morrison. Her text “Body Garden Experiment” describes intercontinental transportation of seeds, the body as a catalyst for multiplication and dispersal: “Clearly, my body waste was not entirely waste material. It had fecundity.”

Datscha Radio17’s “New Symbioses”, in their combination of food, biology, radio(making), ecology and experiment, continued to take on new forms throughout the day. In contemplating the day’s essence, the thought surfaces as to whether or not a radio day can be envisaged as a body. On this elongated, partly winding, partly translucent body which spreads via radio waves across the garden and into the world, there are openings and enates, there are dish-like hollows where tomatoes are stacked next to fishes, and there are tentacles equipped with LEDs emitting the most diverse signals. This body is not human and it is not garden. It is not a breed – not by nature – and it is not a system. Four examples of our symbiotic broadcasting body must suffice to highlight the day’s events.

Raymond Brouwers from Urban Street Forest reaches the Datscha just in time for Carte Verte. It should be clear to us, says Raymond, that our (Western) lifestyle devours landscapes elsewhere, it robs them of water, energy and resources. In the unification of vertical city greening and reforestation, for every urban tree planted, so is another one in areas threatened by desertification. His “One Tour Tree Forest” tour will take him throughout Europe this winter, where he will scout out new buildings for greenification.

The home of symbiosis is the interstice. There it thrives, there it makes its connections: between the buildings of the city, between the continents, between the material and the immaterial, between human and machine. In its semi-opaque depths, hidden in the vibrant folds of its existence, question and answer, wonder, fallacy and fact become one. What could knowledge and learning mean in the future?

After a moment of hesitation, and an effort to imitate a moth, our radio body takes on the shape of orchid blossoms. The broadcast “Hidden elements: reciprocal knowledges” by Shanti Suki Osman and Kate Donovan evolves into circular vortexes of talk – interrupted every so often by a “wow” – about the communication of nonhuman garden dwellers. There are species of orchids that mimic the body of female wasps in order to attract the appropriate pollination partner. Others, in turn, are able to create a sound that resembles the frequency of potential prey insects…

A couple of hours later: A long, thin black cable winds out of a knife’s handle, disappears into the inscrutable tangle on the table and ends up at a keyboard and an assortment of switches. Kasia Justka’s “Singing kitchen” performance merges cutlery and gadgetry, music and electronics into continually new improvised soundscapes.

New Symbioses: Do they require our faculties of imagination? Do they need their own invention? Or could it suffice to translate what already exists into ever-new oscillations? Is not radio itself a symbiotic source of communication and a ‘world receiver’? By the end of the day the channels of the Datscha Radio body open up for breakfast at the other end of the world. We broadcast yet we don’t: Sophea Lerner’s “Saturday Night Breakfast” from Sydney is streamed onto our server whilst we sit down in the nightly garden to finish off the remains of the tomato salad and listen. New seeds for mind and body!

Datscha Radio Madrid: Un Jardin en El Aire

Radio Gardening in Madrid: The residency involved research and documentation work on local (urban) gardens as well as the realisation of a Madrid Datscha Radio off-shoot.The one-day radio station was installed in a geodetic tent in the community garden in Lavapies, “Esta Es Una Plaza”.

All reports, diaries and observations on Madrid’s urban gardening communities, its historic parks and a documentation of the Datscha Radio events staged at „Esta es una Plaze“ are accessible online on datscharadio.de. A publication with Medialab Prado is in preparation.

Participating artists: Alberto García, Anna Katarina Martin, Carolina Carrubba, Eva Kurly, Joaquín Diaz and the gardeners.

Tech / logistics: Jesús Jara (MediaLab Prado) / Maite Camarro (In-Sonora 10). Streaming support: Udo Noll, aporee.org.

100 Days Datscha Radio

Research and radio on the premises of the state garden show Giessen with a focus on German garden culture(s). A converted ex-GDR caravan served as our radio and research homestead. Realised with Pit Schultz and Gärtnerpflichten e. V., Gießen. Prize Artist Competition Landengartenschau 2014.

Our aim was the exploration of local traditions and perspectives of gardening while using a variety of documentary modes. In the course of our research a public archive was created consisting of ethnographic field notes, photographs, protocols, talks and sounds.

Instead of processing these multitudes of data into scientific knowledge they were instantly broadcast via the medium of radio. A so-called “Audiokomposter” developed by Pit Schultz decomposed the material and turned it into a continually changing soundscape. This process of composting and decomposition found its poetic counterpoint in the untamed growth of plants around the caravan. In August, a one-day festival invited guests and visitors to further discussion and participation.

Publication: Datscha Radio/Audiokomposter. In: Draussen, pp. 62-71.