RADIOACTIVITY #6. Xarxa de Ràdios Comunitàries de Barcelona (XRCB) Deleted scenes

We talk to Efraín Foglia, founding member of guifi.net and researcher, teacher, and designer of physical and digital interaction platforms, about the challenges of the XRCB project and about how radio is spilling over into the digital world. And we do so from the perspective of our context, honing in on specific instances of radio activism and experimentation: from the struggles for telecommunication infrastructure, free radio, and FM advocacy to community radio stations in Latin America, by way of digital communities and the internet radio boom.

RADIOACTIVITY looks into two seminal free radio stations – Radio Alice in Bologna and Radio Tomate in Paris – as singular case studies in which self-management, decentralised organisation and DIY coincide. The mini-series is an introduction to the free radio movement that sprung up in several countries in the seventies as a way of giving voice to actors who were outside the media establishment: an alternative to the dominant narrative that can also be seen as precursor of the horizontal rhizome structure of digital networks.

Media studies expert Matthew Fuller talks about the origins and legacy of pirate radio culture in London, focusing on this fertile period of DIY resurgence, when radio resumed a prominent role in a scene hungry for alternative channels before the arrival of the internet.

El artista conceptual y escultor brasileño proponía en 2001 la obra "Babel", una torre de forma cónica de cinco metros de alto y dos de ancho, que se alza hasta el techo expositivo y que está construida a base de radios, de diferentes eras, todas ellas sintonizadas en diferentes emisoras.