about the emotion of real time 

Through funding provided by the Leeway Foundation’s Art and Social Change Grant, Sound Museum Collective has been researching the ways in which radio is embedded in queer milieux and how we can draw from its history to imagine a future in which radio is once again a tool for localized communication and cultural production. This investigative process has included interviews with technicians and activists, parsing through ephemera and radio archiving. Queers along with many other subcultures have used radio as a portal to establishing identity, finding community, participating in activism and engaging with electrical engineering. There are several critical analyses that we wish to highlight in our work that allow us to imagine how we want radio to be involved in our public sphere in years to come. 

First, radio is a rich territory for the social shaping of technology over time. However, any form of technology is going to have significant barriers in regards to race, gender and class. Radio is not an exception and requires additional effort, not in the form of paternalism, to ensure it is available to those with the least access and most need for communication. Only in doing so will radio have the power to disseminate information that will transform communities and enrich culture. 

Mass free speech via the internet has not led to more efficient distribution of information. Our capacity to spread ideas is now rooted in the meddling of trust whose infrastructure is built by ad brokers who garner our attention by generating self-validation feedback loops, the main purpose of which is to make money. We exist in an algorithmic public sphere. Media should not be a vehicle for consumption but rather an essential tool for developing healthy and abundant social relations and art. Therefore, media production should be vastly available to a myriad of peoples in order to ensure expansive discourse and propagation of diverse ideas. We have found that radio is an accessible technology that makes it possible to advance a cultural landscape that prioritizes local community, free speech and aids in the expression of self. 

This presents itself in queer history in various capacities, included but not limiting to, providing a platform for marginalized people to converse about mental and physical health, legal advice, politics, histories and art. Specific to queer culture, radio was important because its anonymity created a platform for individuals to come out. There was once a time when being gay meant that you could be arrested, denied work or assaulted. The anonymity provided by radio created a safe space in which individuals could be themselves and discuss personal issues around their identity. It was also a means of sharing stories about hardships that now act as an oral history. However, within these archives we have also identified a strong need for programming created by and for trans people. We have specifically investigated queer histories because this is our identity. It feels inappropriate to speak on behalf of any other community without feeling like a spectator or anthropologist but it is extremely important that we acknowledge radio is also deeply embedded in black nationalist and immigrant histories that show up as critical organizing tools like those used by the Zapatista movement and union organizers.

Today, our radio spectrum is monopolized by corporations. The airwaves are almost completely commercialized. By allowing the free-market to dictate what is crucial to the public instead of creating standards that uphold a station’s liability to community interest, radio has become a noisey backdrop, highlighting the socio-economic catastrophe of modern day American culture and the destruction of localized content. The closest we get to alternative broadcasting is NPR and college stations, both of which are institutionalized in the interest of serving neoliberals. 

If you are lucky enough to be aware of its creation, whether through word of mouth or a repost of a repost of a repost, perhaps you will be able to dig up a radical podcast that speaks to your local neighborhood or specific issues within your city. It is essential in a time of ever growing censorship to be able to streamline ideas and news to challenge elitist decision makers. Access to a radio broadband would dissolve the insular nature of internet based society.

Something that resonates strongly with us is thinking about “the emotion of real time,” a quote by Brian DeShazor speaking on the podcast Radio Survivor about his experience archiving LGBTQ radio. We experience this profoundly as we are constantly exploring the liminal spaces of our sonic sphere. Radio waves, invisible to sight, touch and even sound without electrical processing, surround us constantly. These ten foot waves reflect off buildings and mountains, traverse great distances, carrying interviews, histories, self-expressions, music, plays, public service announcements and commercials. It’s potential to eliminate time and space; to curate audible emotion and thought is magic in itself. We literally use CRYSTALS to decode frequency modulations. 

How can we once again harness its effect and potential in a way that better serves communities, advances ideas and challenges cruel establishments? One way we have imagined radio being used in our future queer milieux that goes beyond sharing experiences, information and self expression, is to use it as a tool to uplift residents in a time of growing gentrification. It can be used as a platform to elevate the voices of neighbors and make gentrifiers aware of neighborhood affairs as they seek to take up space in an effort to give agency back to the people. We’re imagining a weekly trash pickup report, block captain hours, announcements from community leaders, obituaries, neighborhood project highlights, times for children school assistance, call-ins, a platform for local musicians and arts, skillshare, and hyper local news. 

What if people could access radio waves the way we can access books in a library? What if we demanded commercial stations be responsible for public interest as opposed to selling airtime to the highest bidder? It’s a powerful magical tool which is exactly why we have incredibly limited access. 

We have provided some links to archives from LGBTQ histories to pirate radio here in West Philly. Through this investigation we’ve learned about failed attempts at dissolving barriers to entry, heard important tales of self-actualization, demystified its technology, read and listened to fights for legislative change and have begun to imagine what West Philadelphia could look like with more access to the airwaves. We have also made tutorials for building radio kits and given people the chance at building their own.

Radio isn’t an arcane technology, it’s a highly coveted one who’s full potential is heard through the few frequencies allotted to educational and community broadcasting.