The Belkin and the Polygon Gallery present Radio Art by Dani Gal on CiTR 101.9 FM radio as a complement to the exhibitions Aporia (Notes to a Medium) at the Belkin and Dani Gal: Historical Records at the Polygon Gallery.

Through his in-depth research and technical experimentation, artist Dani Gal draws our attention to a vast, distributed archive of sound documents and their role in the workings of ideology and the production of cultural memory. Gal understands radio as an “acousmatic instrument” after the Greek “accousma” or a ‘thing heard’. And these transmissions on CiTR 101.9FM invite us – as embodied listeners – to consider the relationship of political events to acoustic events. They can be perceived as both historical documentaries and musical compositions in the tradition of musique concrète.

Throughout the eleven weeks of transmissions, we hear a full spectrum of Gal’s approaches to art for radio: from selected episodes of Different Time Different Place Different Pitch, which was composed live by Gal (in collaboration with Achim Lengerer) as a series of radio programs originally broadcast by Documenta 14 / Savvy Funk in the summer of 2017; to the two-part radio play entitled Vertiginous, which was recorded in 2023 for the podcast On Certain Groundlessness, produced by Ruth Anderwald, Leonhard Grond and Sergio Edelsztein.

Upcoming Episodes

Distorted Tango (20 March 2024)
Which reveals how the Soviet Union spent more money on blocking radio stations from the west than on radio broadcasting itself – and what creative methods they used to make unbearable noise. Featuring Rimantas Pleikys, one time advisor of the Lithuanian Radio and Television Association.

The Biennale is Fascist (27 March 2024)
Which considers how the Student Movement of Venice tried to sabotage the 1968 Art Biennale while the Argentinian artist David Lamelas was changing the system from within.

Terra Nullius (3 April 2024)
Which considers how physical soundscapes from remote areas in Australia by Robert Curgenven echo the country’s colonial practices.

Preservation is Visibility (10 April 2024)
Which foregrounds the women behind the civil rights movement in the US as documented in Irma McClaurin’s Black Feminist Archive at the University of Amherst, Massachusetts, and as expressed through Ryan Mendoza’s hijacking of Rosa Parks’s house to Berlin.

Five Broken Microphones (17 April 2024)
Whose title calls up the critically acclaimed 2011 film Five Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat. Dani Gal and Achim Lengerer’s acousmatic document presents sound fragments from the reality of state violence against Palestinians in the West Bank recorded by Miriam Schikler as a means of activism and music making.

Sounds of Our Fatherland (24 April 2024)
Which demonstrates how, shortly after the invention of the microphone, Nazi Germany used field recordings to strengthen nationalistic feelings. Featuring historian Yaron Jean.

Decolonized Weather (1 May 2024)
And meet Eitan Bronstein Aparicio, who uses diverse activities to decolonize Palestine. One of them is mapping destruction. He sent a map to Gaza and documented the trip.

Frequency Anomaly (8 May 2024)
Where an audio tape leads to new discoveries in the Robert Kennedy assassination. With Shane O’Sullivan and Philip Van Praag.

3700 Hours of Recorded Tape (15 May 2024)
Or The Nixon tapes re-enacted live in the studio by actor Jeff Burrell.

Welcome to the Jungle (22 May 2024)
Which reveals how Freedom Rock was used as a weapon in the US invasion of Panama at the end of 1989 – in what was a test case for American wars to come. This is the expanded version of the episode for the Documenta 14 series, which is included in Dani Gal’s installation Panama City, Christmas 1989 from 2017.

Vertiginous (29 May 2024)
An audio play in two parts, with the backdrop of the Second World War and the Algerian War for Independence. Part 1 tells the story of Camilla Mayer and Part 2 tells the story of Abdallah Bebtaga, two circus acrobats whose lives were entangled through their steep rise to glory and tragic fall.

To listen to Dani Gal’s soundworks after the broadcast, visit his website at dani-gal.com.

Image (above): Dani Gal, Dark Continent (set shot), 2023. Photo: Ayala Gazit