radio narrowcast: tate modern

radio narrowcast / performance / installation

tate modern 2016 

This radio narrowcast was developed in response to the new Tate Modern, which opened to the public in June 2016. Drawing on the symptomatic acceleration of ongoing gentrification processes on London’s South Bank, this ephemeral intervention asks critical questions about urban and spatial belonging, redevelopment, formal and informal networks and community formation.

The work was developed over the course of a year in collaboration with the older visitors of Stones End Day Centre, who are directly affected by the effects of gentrification in London. Working with the family archives, memories and histories of migration, sound scapes and performances the project has developed an interactive radio narrowcast manifested in the Studio C located in the main collection of the Tate Modern.

Unlike a radio broadcast, a radio narrowcast does not rely on a technologised, distant and unidirectional one-to-many transmission. Instead a narrowcast can be seen as a site-specific and collaborative practice that derives from the methodologies of listening and prioritises pragmatic concerns of a particular neighbourhood, group of people or individuals. By questioning the functionality of the radio studio, opening it up and ambiguously shifting the roles of listener and broadcaster, narrowcasts can involve, but do not require, radio technology or technology a priori. The radio takeover of Studio C in the Boiler House considered radio transmission within the overarching questions of process, agency and intentionality of practice: Who processes what for whom? What is the process? And to what end is it being processed?

Interview by Alessandra Ferrini – Mnemoscape
 
Enormous gratitude for this particular Radio Narrowcast: Michele Fuirer, Victoria Ivanova, Emily Stone, Alexa Lowe, Age UK Lewisham & Southwark, Stones End Day Centre, Blackfriars Settlement and visitors of Tate Modern. 

Commissioned by Tate Modern