August 28, 2006
I Am(not)sterdam
10 Exercises to get the City out of your Body
Radio LIGNA / Radioballet / :: I Am(not)sterdam: 10 Exercises to get the City out of your Body :: Saturday September 2nd | 13.30 pm :: Radio Patapoe 88.3 FM and Radio Ruigoord 90.3 FM :: Location: Leidsestraat :: Bring your own radios and mobile phone receivers! :: Radio receivers also distributed at De Balie, Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, Amsterdam.
Amsterdam Inc. - In the streets of Amsterdam, we are not only inhabitants or visitors of the city, but we also are part of a brand, that blends the individual being and the city into a common identity: 'I amsterdam'. There is no being in the city without being the city. The public sphere becomes the showroom for the new brand Amsterdam.
Deviant Behaviour - The appearance of the inner city as showroom is a product of sanitizing policies, eviction, surveillance and control. The latter is not only executed by police, and security personnel, but also by ourselves, as we have internalized modes of self-control and 'proper' behaviour. In the beat of the corporate city we confirm this logic by simply repeating the same set of fixed gestures again and again: walking around, stopping, looking in the shop windows, exchanging money for commodities. No rule is needed forbidding deviation: individual deviation is already part of the city branding.
'I amsterdam' means diversity. But what happens if we fail to repeat these gestures, and invent alien gestures on a collective scale? Can we, as inhabitants and visitors of Amsterdam, intervene in its regulated urban rhythm without becoming incorporated in the city's branding?
Radio ballet - The Radio Ballet 'I Am(not)sterdam' challenges you to find an answer! The radio ballet consists of a radio broadcast, especially produced for the Leidsestraat. It will suggest 10 different exercises to get the city out of your body. As a dispersed collective of participants, we perform deviant gestures (according to the script of the radio ballet), which would normally be impossible to do on an individual basis. Can we subvert the logic of the corporate city, by not subjecting ourselves to it anymore?
Come and find out! Be part of the Radio Ballet in the Leidsestraat on Saturday, 2nd of September 2006! I Am(not)sterdam! Dispersed collectivity instead of common identity! Don?t subject to the corporate city - become alien by public radio listening!
About Radio Ballet LIGNA
The free radio group LIGNA exists since 1995. LIGNA consists of the media theorists and radio artists Ole Frahm, Michael Hüners, and Torsten Michaelsen, who since the early nineties have been working at the "Freies Sender Kombinat" (FSK), a public non-profit radio station in Hamburg. In several shows and performances they have been investigating the importance of dispersal in radio as well as of the radio. One of the main focuses is to refer to forgotten and remote possibilities of radio use in order to develop new forms of interactive practices. Another emphasis has been placed on the development of concepts and the production of performative audio plays in order to find out how radio can intervene in public and controlled spaces, so that its public nature reappears in the form of uncontrollable situations
The “Radio Ballet” is an excellent example of the latter: it is a radio play produced for the collective reception in certain public places. It gives the dispersed radio listeners the opportunity, to subvert the regulations of the space. Held for the first time in Hamburg’s Central Station in 2002, this focused on how radio can intervene in public and controlled spaces, so that its public nature reappears in the form of uncontrollable situations. Yet, Ligna's performances aim to confront the privatised, controlled production of capitalism with the dispersed, yet collective, uncanny and public production of the radio. The Radio Ballet brought back excluded gestures of deviant behavior were invited to enter the station, equipped with cheap, portable radios and earphones. By means of these devices they could listen to a radio program consisting of a choreography suggesting permitted and forbidden gestures (to beg, to sit or lie down on the floor etc.). These suggestions were interrupted by reflections on the public space and on the Radio ballet itself.
The Radio Ballet I Am[not]sterdam, especially developed for De Balie, consists of a radio broadcast, produced for the Leidsestraat in Amsterdam. The radio broadcast will suggest ten different exercises to get the city out of your body. The dispersed collective of radio listeners will be able to perform deviant gestures that no one would or could do alone.
Is it possible to subvert the logic of the corporate city, if people do not subject themselves to it anymore? Come and find out! Become part of the LIGNA Radio Ballet in the Leidsestraat on Saturday, 2nd of September 2006!
The Radio Ballet starts at 14:00. You can get radios at De Balie from 13:30 on. But better bring your own radios, or mobile phones with receiver! The Ballet will be broadcasted on the Frequency of Radio Patapoe 88,3 FM.
I Am[not]sterdam! Dispersed collectivity instead common identity! Don´t subject to the corporate city - become alien by public radio listening!
Posted by jo at August 28, 2006 10:03 AM
