RADIOACTIVITY #1
Radio Alice
Born in Bologna, Franco Berardi is an activist and Marxist theoretician. His work is a critical analysis of the media and its impact on capitalist structures. Bifo’s curriculum is proof of this inexhaustible interest in the role of the media, not only because of the many works he has written, but also through his involvement in numerous alternative dissemination, education and communication projects, from the legendary Radio Alice, which he co-founded, to the more recent telestreet movement and Orfeo TV channel.
Radio Alice was a free radio project that was created in Bologna in the late seventies by a group that brought left-wing activists together with artists who worked with counterinformation, or what Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi (one of the core members) called ‘the creation of divergent realities’.
Perhaps to the surprise of the powers that be, the liberalisation of the radio airwaves that brought with it the country’s first free and non-commercial radio stations soon gave way to a local, short-range guerrilla movement that ruptured the long, tedious monopoly of the state media. Radio Alice was by no means the only free radio experiment in Italy, but in spite of its short lifespan – the station initially operated from 9 February 1976 to 12 March 1977 – it had a strong influence on the social and political life of the capital of the Emilia-Romagna region.
Reflecting the opinions, obsessions, and stories of its listeners and organisers, and establishing itself as a creative platform in the new non-commercial radio space, this small neo-dada bastion was an important piece in the jigsaw puzzle of life in Bologna, eventually amplifying the voice of the popular uprising and the clashes between students and the police in early 1977 (the chain of events that eventually led the station to be shut down).
The strong personality of Radio Alice was more than just the sum of the points of views of the original collective (Franco Berardi, Paolo Ricci, Filippo Scòzzari and Maurizio Torrealta, among others). Rather, it can be seen as a complex collage of the ideas of the autonomous movement (which emerged in Italy in the sixties) mixed with the influence of the Situationists, the pre-punk seed that was starting to spread in Europe, and the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Efraín Foglia about the Xarxa de Ràdios Comunitàries de Barcelona (XRCB) that we were unable to include the first time around.
Lizzie Borden and "Born in Flames"
Pirate radio became one of the protagonists and main motifs of the narrative thread of Lizzie Borden's 'Born in Flames'. In this short excerpt, the cult and self-taught filmmaker Lizzie Borden shares the various reasons that led her to take an interest in the phenomenon of European free radio, and how it helped her to connect the various agendas of this cult film.
Xarxa de Ràdios Comunitàries de Barcelona (XRCB)
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.
Franco "Bifo" Berardi
Bifo talks about mass killings in relation to cinema, mental health, neuroplasticity, friendship, irony and, ultimately, hope.
Radio Tomate
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.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with the writer, philosopher and political and cultural Franco Berardi.
Franco Berardi
Interview with the writer, philosopher and political and cultural activist Franco Berardi on citizen resistance in the face of the crisis that currently hangs over Europe and possible strategies for insurrection.