Radio Umwelt: How to Be(come) an Intra-species Radio
Opening event: 9th of February – 19:00 till 23:00 at Het Nieuwe Instituut
Exhibition duration: 9 February – 29 April

Can we humans improve the way we relate to other species by literally becoming radio receivers? In search of more-than-human communication, designer Sander Blomsma takes us into the world of electromagnetic waves. He wonders how humans, non-human life and inanimate matter experience ‘reality’, and what kind of contact and exchange we might imagine between them all, beyond science and philosophy. Blomsma uses radio waves for his exploration precisely because everything in this radiation landscape responds and vibrates with it, whether it is alive and animate or not. He translates material and immaterial reality in ‘Radio Umwelt’ using various configurations of special antennas and audio equipment into perceptible sound that act as a space the visitor steps into. However, Blomsma critically notes that the current radio landscape is affected in a problematic way by the monopoly that humans seem to exercise over it. As if radio is an object and space that humanity owns, perceivable or not. Only when we no longer recognize humanity’s claim to the domain of radio, we can relate to it differently. Then, one can approach it as a dynamic and interactive play of interconnected human and non-human entities that together determine what meanings their bodies represent and how they communicate with each other.

image by Sander Blomsma