Anton Kats


RA:DIO - Harmonies. Melodies. Earth. World.

The latest edition of the RA:DIO seminar is inspired by the tension between the harmonic and melodic space, between Earth and the world.



How does a melody grow out of harmony? How does a world grow out of earth?



Uncomfortable with politics as a sphere of universals and ethics as the sphere of the singular, the latest iteration of the practice-based seminar is a group exercise in attunement. As a starting point, the group develops embodied experiences exploring the tension between a harmonic and a melodic space. Studying the potential of sound, rhythm and interval as a spatial strategy the seminar wonders how to contribute to the earth's ethics and politics that embrace difference, otherness and contra/diction.



Inspired by the feminist philosopher Kelly Oliver and experimental composer William Allaudin Mathieu the seminar is led by the question: How can we share the earth with those with whom we do not share the world?



The seminar is transdisciplinary and draws on artistic research methodologies. RA:DIO embraces sound, music and film, critical theory, poetry, performance and expanded radio studies among other domains of practice. The students develop new or continue existing individual and/or collective projects and use the time during the seminar to practice. Gradually giving space to presentation and review of artistic work, the students develop and reflect on hybrid, process-oriented, agency-driven, imaginative and contextualised projects inside and outside the academy. The seminar also offers a playful space to cook and share food, time travel, create music ensembles, improvise with modular synthesisers and drum machines, breathe, read, listen, watch, and present work together.



RA:DIO operates as an open, peer-reviewed laboratory driven by the fundamental questions of radio transmission: Who transmits what for whom? What is the transmission? Why and how is something being transmitted?



Winter Semester 2022 - 2023 is special, as it marks the beginning of the collaboration between Refuge Worldwide Radio and MA Spatial Strategies. The seminar offers attending students a unique possibility to develop and present a first hour-long, collaborative Spatial Strategies broadcast at the Refuge Worldwide Radio by the end of the Semester.



Recommended Sources:
Kelly Oliver (2018) Earth & World. Philosophy After the Apollo Mission
W.A. Mathieu (1994): The Musical Life
Milford Graves (2018) Full Mantis
Karen Barad (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning
Primo Levi (1975) Periodic Table
Oxana Timofeeva (2022) Solar Politics
Pauline Oliveros (2022) Quantum Listening
Tara Rodgers and Jonathan Sterne (2011); The poetics of signal processing.
Sun Ra (2005) The Immeasurable Equation
Hazrat Inayat Khan (1923); The Mysticism of Sound and Music
bell hooks (2000); teaching to transgress
Ultra Red (2012); Five Protocols of Organised Listening
Salome Voegelin (2018) The Political Possibility of Sound: Fragments of Listening.
Felix Guattari (1986); Popular Free Radio
Theodor W. Adorno (1966); Education After Auschwitz
Victor Wooten (2006); The Music Lesson