Neighborhood Public Radio

1/4 Watt of Pure Power: Experiments in the Dark Transmission Arts

Date 4/27/09

Affiliation Oakland/ Chicago/ San Diego

Abstract

Neighborhood Public Radio has completed it's first 5 year plan. In that time we were dedicated to access in excess and a critique of the limited public radio options available in the United States. Since that first broadcast in January of 2004 we have developed programming with communities around the world, taught people to build their own transmitters, experimented very publicly with transmission as an artistic medium in the Bay Area, and most recently managed to bring the original critique of National Public Radio to their board members and their airwaves. Some recent experiments have included workshops on television transmitter building, and circuit bending with an ecological concern. After the success of the Whitney Biennial we are at a crossroads. Perhaps we need a new 5 year plan. Perhaps we need a 1 year plan. Maybe we need a new directive. Maybe we're done.

After a presentation of our history and some of our recent projects, in keeping to our collaborative process, we will ask the audience... What next?

Bio

Neighborhood Public Radio (NPR) was founded in 2004 by multimedia artists and educators LeE Montgomery, Jon Brumit and Michael Trigilio.

Acting as a traveling band of guerilla broadcasters, NPR personnel have hosted thematic broadcasts far and wide including in numerous galleries in San Francisco, at Chicago's Version 5 Festival (2005) and San Jose?s Zero1 Festival (2006) as well as various projects in Europe. One of these was in Serbia where, funded by a grant from CEC Artslink, NPR worked with media organization kuda.org.

Enabled by a Creative Work Fund Grant, NPR recently collaborated in a series of projects collectively titled Radio Cartography in partnership with San Francisco?s Southern Exposure Gallery. Most recently, the NPR collaborative had a residency at the Headlands Center for Art in Marin, CA and followed that with a 4 month residency in a storefront on Madison Avenue in New York as part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

Neighborhood Public Radio has been named "Best Super Local Radio Station" by San Francisco Magazine and has been featured in Punk Planet magazine, Artforum, Women?s Wear Daily, and the Chicago Reader.

-- As of 4/27/09