claudia wegener
‘I am a listener…’, and ‘I am an artist with a bag…’
are some of the more precise responses to matters
concerning my bio graphy. Expanding a little, I could
also say that: I spend much time with (more and less
audible) writings, conversations or performance; and
that I have given a name to ‘the bag’: Radio
Continental Drift (paying homage to my name’s cousin
Alfred… and his drift theory…).
Radio is a means of writing with the ear, and theatre
for the voice. It’s a means of broad casting (more and
less recent, and ancient) technologies of listening
and telling or what we call ‘art’ and ‘culture’.
Radio, like theatre, allows involving every one
directly: instantly editing and directing his, and
her, and their own skills, concerns, questions and
initiatives, dreams and doubts, playing his role, or
her’s, or their’s, or some one else’s, on this side of
a divide or on an other…
The writings of the ‘24hrs’ series are a point of
departure for much of what I’ve been doing.
Handwritten footage of street observations translates
into texts and audio work: radio movies from London,
or Rio de Janeiro, or Johannesburg. Under the title
STREET WRITINGS, I continue the work with small
audience groups who over some weeks of workshops
become producers, finally signing as a group a piece
of work: a radio programme (broad cast on air,
on-line, as CDs, Bluetooth files etc). The trajectory
of the NO-GO-ZONES audio radio project is taking this
further: we began by gathering a production-team of
young people who’d then make contact to, produce
reports of and with other culturally active groups,
such as Entelechi Arts, Yaa Asantewaa’s Carnivals
Group, Cooltan Arts, or people around the Canadian
community/campus radio station Cjam91.5fm. The results
are an open on-line archive of no-go-zone audio clips
and samples, and ongoing listening and broadcasting
exchanges between various groups and individuals.
The NO-GO-ZONES project is driven by the experiences
and questions I brought with me from South Africa back
to London. Returning to Africa – and this time to
another African country, Cameroon, with a different
set of histories and languages – challenges me to
cross-check and re-adjust the audio radio instruments,
experiences, concepts, ideas, I’ve gathered in my bag
in the course of this project against current African
modes of conversation and interaction. In Douala and
Bonendale, I’d imagine zooming in deeply into local
scenes, making contact with small groups, communities
and individuals, and explore together with the people
I’ll encounter ways of listening, broad casting and
radio (programme) making.