PRESENTATION: RADIO’S LIMINAL SONIC SPACES

In this part talk, part conversation and part performance, DJ and broadcaster Nina Lupini pulls at the threads of broadcasting’s radical history. From the Golden Age of Radio up to the live-streaming of a post-COVID world, the transmission of voice, music, and sound remains central to the social fabric, though digital technologies have significantly—and perhaps fundamentally—altered the nature of radio. The ease of hijacking and misusing analogue technology played a vital role in the radical activism, trade unionism, and social uprisings of the 20th century; wiggling to the end of the dial in search of pirate radio stations was a beloved rite of passage for many growing up in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. What do we lose as our technology mutates, when we no longer listen in the space between two stations, or accidentally stumble on “the end of the dial”?

This talk was selected from the Unsound 2024 Open Call.