MELODIES. HARMONIES. EARTH. 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. 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

improvise 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. Mthie (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

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