ANTENNA is a collaborative project by Debris Facility and Bridget Chappell which tunes into the disruptive, discursive and joyous potential of radio, transmission and localised distribution.
By re-turning the dial both conceptually and literally on pirate radio, the artists sketch out blueprints for autonomous and micro cultural ecologies, embracing the possibilities of “narrowcasting” – the rejection of mass audience. Occupying the unused spaces and frequencies, ANNTENA provides breaks amongst the commercial stations.
The antenna is a speculation and production method of what it means to tune into, listen, and develop cultures around exchange, interdependence, critical reflections and collective organised chaos and partying. Resonating with the histories, aesthetics and tactics of pirate radio, illegal raves, bootlegging, counterfeits, theft, glitch, artistic pranks and hacking, we align with rupture.
Debris and Bridget flip the antenna from being a passive receiver to being one of agency and production, who has the ears and embodiment to tune into the many frequencies at hand. The artists attune to the localised and direct ways to produce and disseminate works to each other, in spite of the ongoing hegemonic forces of platform cultures and corporations.
Through this distributed and participatory project, the artists invite you to share in the generative process of re-making existing media infrastructure into something which can be played, shared and driven to excess.
Debris Facility is a para-corporate entity founded 2015 from the rubble of a single artists practice. The Facility’s operations parasite onto processes between commodity and embodiments. Their cultural labour is engaged in queering hierarchies of value through producing artworks, installations, events, administrative interventions, discourse and design. They have exhibited and produced works in local, national and international contexts, in galleries, performance spaces, publications, online and elsewhere. They teach at the Victorian College of the Arts; their work is held in private collections and landfill.
Bridget Chappell is a reformed artist still making art. She enjoys tinkering with sound technology; writing essays, poems, and particular letters; putting on raves. She produces and DJs as Hextape, founded and ran Sound School in Narrm, and maintains a good network of borrowed cellos around Oceania for classical shows.
Debris Facility and Bridget Chappell are collaborators shoehorning themselves into unattended FM frequencies, buildings, technologies, mediums, etc.
Image: Bridget Chappell and Debris Facility, ANTENNA (2023), digital graphic, courtesy of the artists © Debris Facility and Bridget Chappell
