the airwaves were utilised as a form of public space and a venue for live art making during my involvement in the Visible City residency. On a late night radio show on the Melbourne station Triple R, I introduced a project made in collaboration with Lara Thoms entitled Songs for Cleaners, in addition to being interviewed more generally about the works being made for the Visible City residency in the studio.
Here's what Visible City curator/director Martyn Coutts had to say about the broadcast on the Visible City tumblr site :
"transmission artist and visible city participant Sally Ann McIntyre/Radio Cegeste appeared on the radio programme O' Tomorrow, which is hosted from midnight Tuesday night – 2am Wednesday morning by Patrick O’Brien (aka. Downpat), on independent Melbourne radio station RRR.
as Patrick says of the show “Music is everywhere. From the past to the future. From Brunswick to Burma. From innovators AND idiots...”
in conversation with Pat, Sally talked about and demonstrated the expanded / live radiophonic works made during the course of the residency for her mobile radio station Radio Cegeste, and considered the airwaves in a wider sense as a public space which allow for artistic intervention.
a short narratorless / experimental radiophonic documentary was compiled by Sally especially for this show, from found sounds collected in the cityscape and during her travels through Melbourne during the visible city residency.
she also previewed the sound / performance work ‘Songs for Cleaners’, comprising a mix of the favourite songs of people who work as cleaners in the QV Mall in Melbourne’s CBD, a selection collected by fellow visible city artist Lara Thoms. Aired on the show at 1am, this was originally intended to be placed back into the Mall space by Lara, who was to be be sitting in the Mall’s food hall with a radio, but due to the general exhaustion of the residency requirements, Lara was right to postpone to an hour during the following days, and a small scale transmission to the Mall via Radio Cegeste's mini FM."
Songs for Cleaners' more convivial daytime narrowcast transmission via mini FM was still within the working hours of some of the cleaners interviewed for the project.
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many thanks to O'Tomorrow's congenial host, Pat O'Brien, particularly for allowing such avant garde tracks as Dolly Parton's '9 to 5' onto the normally mainstream-free airwaves of his respected experimental music programme.
