Audio Interference: Recent Episodes
Interference Archive
Interference Archive is a social space, exhibition venue, and open stacks archive of movement culture, based in Brooklyn. Audio Interference is a podcast dedicated to the activists, artists, and organizers whose histories make up the archive.
In this episode, volunteer Jen Hoyer explains how the archive is using donated materials to create an online presence for noteworthy, but digitally absent groups like Sister Serpents. But generating new materials and new discussions is not without a few risks. Stay tuned to find out more.
To learn more about Sister Serpents, check out episode 52!
Audio Interference is produced by Interference Archive.
Music: "The Crisper" by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue) "Soundboy" by 4bstr4ck3r "Scenery" by Kai Engel "Elk" by Meydän
In this episode, we speak with Interference Archive volunteer Dane Michael about his favorite zines in the archive’s collection as well as his interest in collecting radical print materials and mutual aid ephemera, which he regularly donates to the archive. In particular, Dane shares experiences traveling to social centers and radical spaces in Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia in Spain. He also talks about the mutual aid work he is a part of in the Bay Area in California.
References from this episode of Audio Interference: Doris Zine: www.dorisdorisdoris.com Todo Por Hacer: www.todoporhacer.org
Dane is part of a few mutual aid groups in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco, including: East Bay Food Not Bombs: www.eastbayfoodnotbombs.org Omni Commons: www.omnicommons.org Bound Together Bookstore: www.boundtogetherbooks.wordpress.com Prisoners Literature Project: www.prisonlit.org North Oakland Mutual Aid: www.instagram.com/northoakland_mutualaid/?hl=en
Thank you to J.Cruz/COVR for creating the music for this episode, which is titled “shake shake shake”.
Audio Interference is produced by Interference Archive.
Free City Radio contribution for Audio Interference: Asylum seekers fighting back against workplace exploitation in Montréal
In this segment we hear about the struggles for workplace justice for non-status people and asylum seekers in Montréal. The segment revolves around an ongoing campaign on the part of the Immigrant Workers Centre to support the workers at the warehouse distribution centre for Dollarama, one of the largest dollar shop corporations in North America. Many of the workers at the 24-hour distribution centre for North America, which was declared an essential service by the government in Québec City last spring, are asylum seekers and non-status people.
Mostafa Henaway, an organizer with the Immigrant Workers Centre speaks about the campaign to support Dollarama warehouse workers, giving some context and background. Mohamed Barry, a former asylum seeker from Guinea who recently won status, speaks on experiences working within the Dollarama warehouse distribution centre and details the ways that asylum seekers from West Africa and the Caribbean are being exploited in such workplaces in Québec.
Mohamed is one of the founders of the Statut pour les guinéens campaign to demand regularization for all refugees from Guinea and is a former worker at the Dollarama warehouse. View a silk-screen poster worked on by artist Christeen Francis, a member of Justseeds Artists' Cooperative, that is up here to support the campaign.
Thank you for listening ! –– Stefan Christoff.
In this episode, we speak to Zeelie Brown, a Black, queer artist and cellist based in New York City. She creates “soulscapes”: sites and soundscapes that invoke the temporality, sacredness of connection, and layers of history embedded within feelings of refuge. Zeelie’s sanctuary spaces draw on her personal and ancestral traditions of music, cuisine, scent, ritual, and community. Throughout this episode, you’ll hear music that Zeelie has produced as a part of her practice.
This episode stems out of a partnership with Brooklyn Public Library, where we explore how different organizations, groups, and people aim to create space for folks who are often disenfranchised and disempowered by normative systems at work in our world. Stick around at the end of the episode to hear from Tim Barrigan, a literacy advisor in the adult learning center at the Brooklyn Public Library.
You can listen to the Brooklyn Public Library's episode here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/education-for-all
Volunteer Coordinator Sophie Glidden-Lyon explains why handbooks are among her favorite items at Interference Archive.
Audio Interference is produced by Interference Archive. To learn more visit www.interferencearchive.org
Music in this episode: "Arizona Moon," "Palms Down" "Calisson" "The Cornice" & “Dusting,”by Blue Dot Sessions - www.sessions.blue Theme in G” by Poddington Bear
In New York in the early 1970s, government disinvestment coupled with widespread landlord neglect and abandonment, gave rise to squatting, urban homesteading, and other forms of self-help housing. Residents took control of city-owned land and buildings, and developed or rehabilitated their own housing. The ultimate goal for many of these tenants was to take their buildings out of the speculative housing market and own them collectively and democratically. Today, around 1,300 resident-controlled, low-income housing cooperatives exist in New York City, providing some of the most deeply affordable and stable housing in the city.
The Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, or UHAB, grew out of the self-help housing movement. UHAB was founded in 1973, and started by working with self-organized groups of tenants to convert homesteading projects into limited-equity cooperatives, affordable in perpetuity and owned by their tenants.
In this episode, we are sharing excerpts of an oral history of UHAB, conducted by researcher Conor Snow in 2020 and featuring interviews with Charles Laven, Fernando Alarcon, Ayo Harrington, and Ann Henderson. Thank you to UHAB, and to Charles, Ayo, Ann, Fernando and Conor for granting us permission to share this audio with you.
For more information about UHAB: https://uhab.org/
For more information about Interference Archive’s exhibition in collaboration with UHAB, “Building for Us: Stories of Homesteading and Cooperative Housing”: https://interferencearchive.org/building-for-us-stories-of-homesteading-and-cooperative-housing/
For previous Audio Interference episodes on similar topics, check out: Episode 74, “We the People Won’t Go” (https://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-74-we-the-people-wont-go/) Episode 47 “Lower East Side Community Gardens” (https://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-47-lower-east-side-community-gardens/) Episode 31 “Squatting on the Lower East Side” (https://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-31-squatting-on-the-lower-east-side/) Episode 23 “Brooklyn Housing Struggle” (https://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-23-brooklyn-housing-struggle/).
Music: “Bathed in Fine Dust” by Andy G. Cohen and “Tribal” by David Szesztay, both from the Free Music Archive.
Produced by Interference Archive.
Letters from Comrades on the Inside: In this episode, we hear "A Quarter of a Century," a song by Ivie, a comrade on the inside whose story is uplifted by Survived and Punished. It references her campaign to free herself from a 25 to life sentence and was recorded over the phone from Bedford Hills prison, a maximum security correctional facility in Bedford Hills, NY. In the middle of the song, you'll hear an accompanying rap by another comrade, Sassi, who is also incarcerated at Bedford Hills.
This episode of Audio Interference is part of a series in collaboration with Survived & Punished NY, a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and the culture of violence that contributes to it.
Visit audiointerference.org to listen to more letters from Survived & Punished's comrades on the inside, as well as a longer interview with two Survived & Punished members. Visit www.survivedandpunishedny.org to read Survived & Punished NY’s newsletters and explore their work.
A huge thank you to Ivie and Sassi for sharing their song. We'd also like to thank Lae Sway, Yves Tong Nguyen, Heena, Zoe Vongtau, Red Schulte, Mariah Hill, and Martina Ilunga, along with everyone else at Survived & Punished, for working with us on this episode.
To learn more about Survived and Punished NY, visit survivedandpunishedny.org
Read the latest edition of Survived and Punished’s newsletter, Free : Survivors: https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org/newsletter-campaign/
Music from this episode (in order of appearance):
“Divide” by Six Time Users, from the album, Live at WFMU for Janky Ray’s Radio Riot 6/16/18
Letters from Comrades on the Inside: In this episode, we hear from Alisha Walker, a comrade on the inside whose story is uplifted by Survived and Punished. She shares her experiences as an incarcerated person and her thoughts on justice and access to information.
This episode of Audio Interference is part of a series in collaboration with Survived & Punished NY, a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and the culture of violence that contributes to it.
Visit audiointerference.org to listen to more letters from Survived & Punished's comrades on the inside, as well as a longer interview with two Survived & Punished members. Visit www.survivedandpunishedny.org to read Survived & Punished NY’s newsletters and explore their work.
A huge thank you to Alisha Walker for sharing her story. We'd also like to thank Lae Sway, Yves Tong Nguyen, Heena, Zoe Vongtau, Red Schulte, Mariah Hill, and Martina Ilunga, along with everyone else at Survived & Punished, for working with us on this episode.
To learn more about Survived and Punished NY, visit survivedandpunishedny.org
Read the latest edition of Survived and Punished’s newsletter, Free : Survivors: https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org/newsletter-campaign/
Music from this episode (in order of appearance):
“Divide” by Six Time Users, from the album, Live at WFMU for Janky Ray’s Radio Riot 6/16/18
Hello, comrades,
In this episode of Audio Interference, we’re sharing reflections from Jessica Paradiso, a survivor on the inside. The episode stems from a collaboration with Survived and Punished New York, a grassroots, abolitionist group that works to eradicate the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and the culture of violence that contributes to it.
Prison walls create barriers to communication. Through our collaboration, we’re bridging this information gap by sharing the experiences of folks on the inside with those on the outside, as well as archiving Survived & Punished’s organizing strategies to free all who are incarcerated.
Together, we came up with questions that Survived & Punished sent to their comrades. This episode is a response from Jessica Paradiso, written in May 2020, read by Survived and Punished volunteer, Yves Tong Nguyen.
A huge thank you to Jessica Paradiso for sharing her story with us. We’d also like to thank Lae Sway, Yves Tong Nguyen, Heena, Zoe Vongtau, Red Schulte, Martina Abrahams Ilunga, and Mariah Hill, along with everyone else at Survived & Punished, for working with us on this episode. To learn more about Survived and Punished, visit their website, survivedandpunishedny.org.
If you haven’t already, we encourage you to listen to the other responses from folks inside that are part of this series. We also published an in-depth interview with folks from Survived & Punished about their work. To listen, find us on itunes, stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts: www.audiointerference.org
In solidarity, Audio Interference Produced by Interference Archive.
This episode of Audio Interference is about Survived and Punished, a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and the culture of violence that contributes to it. We’re speaking with two members of the New York chapter of the group, Will Willis and Maureen Silverman.
To learn more about Survived and Punished NY, visit https://survivedandpunishedny.org
Read the latest edition of Survived and Punished’s newsletter, Free : Survivors: www.survivedandpunishedny.org/newsletter-campaign/newsletter-store
To learn more about Mia Mingus’ work and writings on transformative justice: www.leavingevidence.wordpress.com
Tits and Sass blog, which Will quotes from in this episode: www.titsandsass.com
Memorial for Darlene “Lulu” Benson-Seay, who Will remembers in this episode: www.mourningourlosses.org/memorials/darlene-lulu-benson-seay?fbclid=IwAR2wA8dCuIi_p_AmyYkg5Sv_4iLTTg-uAL7L4EPYGuRoWkJMv4r-6saIQrA
This episode is part of a series of episodes about Survived and Punished’s work. Visit audiointerference.org to listen to letters from their comrades on the inside. Visit www.survivedandpunishedny.org to read Survived & Punished NY’s newsletters and explore their work.
A huge thank you to Ivie, Sassii, Maureen Silverman, and Will Willis for contributing to this episode. And a huge thank you to all other Survived and Punished volunteers.
Music from this episode (in order of appearance):
“Divide” by Six Time Users, from the album, Live at WFMU for Janky Ray’s Radio Riot 6/16/18
"A quarter of a century” by Survived and Punished comrade Ivié, a song that she wrote about her campaign to free herself from a 25 to life sentence, recorded over the phone from Bedford Hills prison, a maximum security correctional facility in Bedford Hills, NY. Accompanying rap by Survived and Punished comrade, Sassii, who is also incarcerated at Bedford Hills.
Produced by Interference Archive. From all of us at Audio Interference, thanks for listening.
The Sanctuary City Project is a research-led participatory art project from San Francisco based artists Chris Treggiari and Sergio De La Torre. They work to create inclusive spaces for dialogue and debate about sanctuary cities and immigration. As you’ll hear, the Sanctuary City Project collects stories of immigration, detention, and resistance and then shares those narratives with the public through video projections, installations, mobile food projects, billboards, banners, and pop-up print shops. Some of those posters are now housed in the Interference Archive collection in Brooklyn, New York.
More information at: https://www.sanctuarycityproject.com/
Produced by Interference Archive.
Music in this episode: “Dusting,” “Stilt,” “Borough” & “Hickory Interlude” by Blue Dot Sessions - www.sessions.blue "I. Allegro non molto" by Gavin Gamboa "Theme in G” by Poddington Bear
On April 30th, 1970, US President Richard Nixon announced the expansion of the Vietnam War into the neighboring country of Cambodia. This resulted in a wave of student strikes across the country throughout the month of May, 1970.
On May 4th, the US National Guard opened fire on student protesters at Kent State University in Ohio. Eleven days later, Mississippi state police opened fire on student protesters at Jackson State University, a historically black college. Together, six students were killed in the shootings.
In this episode, an Interference Archive volunteer, Jen Hoyer, interviews activist Dennis O'Neil. Dennis grew up in New York City and was a student at New York University in May, 1970. He tells us about the events leading up to the student strike, as well as the aftermath of the shootings at Kent and Jackson State.
This episode is part of a forthcoming exhibit at Interference Archive about the 50 year anniversary of the student strikes of May, 1970. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this exhibit has been moved online. For updates about the exhibit, subscribe to our mailing list at www.interferencearchive.org.
To read more about the student strikes of May 1970, You can read series of retrospective articles written by Dennis at: firemtn.blogspot.com/2010/04/may-70-finally-on-our-own.html
Music: Rompamos Los Carteles Electorales by Joaquin.
Produced By Interference Archive.
This Episode is a recording of the event “We the People won’t go: LES Artists on the Squatter Movement.” Amy Starecheski moderates a discussion with Seth Tobocman, Fly, and Maggie Wrigley. They share their experiences as both squatters and artists in the LES of NY in the 80’s. They talk about the role of art in the fight to stay in the neighborhood, in the fight for affordable and safe housing for themselves and their neighbors.
To see more of Seth Tobocman's work: https://www.sethtobocman.com/ To read about Maggie's book: An Architecture of Change, Building a Better world: https://unmpress.com/books/architecture-change/9780826346865 To see more of Fly's work: http://flyoart.blogspot.com/
This panel was a part of an exhibition and series of events at the archive in Oct 2019-Feb 2020 called Building for Us: Stories of Homesteading and Cooperative Housing.
Audio Interference is produced by the Interference Archive, an all volunteer run archive of social movement material.
Music: "Stuck in New York" Three Chord Monte with Joe Block, live at WFMU September, 2005
"We don't want to have to put up ghost bikes anymore."
27 cyclists were killed in New York City in 2019, more than twice as many as in 2018. In this episode of Audio Interference, we speak with volunteers Ellen Belcher and Steve Scofield from the New York City chapter of Ghost Bikes, who install street memorials for cyclists who have been killed in traffic violence. We travel with them up to 125th to install a bike and learn about the history and current movement of Ghost Bikes. For more information on the memorials in NYC and around the world, check out their website: http://ghostbikes.org/
Thank you to Steve Scofield and Ellen Belcher for speaking with us. To learn more about the 27 cyclists who lost their lives in 2019, we recommend this profile by Gothamist: https://gothamist.com/news/2019-was-extremely-deadly-year-nyc-cyclists-here-are-their-stories
Music and Audio in this Episode: - Detailing by Blue Dot Sessions
Produced by Interference Archive.
“Areas that are now very affluent in London like Notting Hill or Camden Town, these would have been full of squatted places. Literally streets, like whole blocks of terraced housing that were squatted. From the 1960-70s onward there’s lots of people that ended up in possession of properties having initially squatted there.”
Dissident Island is an anarchist radio show broadcasting on the first and third Friday of every month from the London Action Resource Centre. Since 2007, Dissident Island has covered anarchist life in London, including the rise and fall of squatted social centers, and the Dissident Island archives offer a picture of the way squatters have changed the city, and the ways in which they’ve been affected by new laws and policing. Dissident Island also presents benefit shows in squatted venues, produces a zine, and offers radio workshops. This episode includes excerpts from an interview with Patrick Evans, one of the creators of Dissident Island, as well as clips from the show.
The voices you heard in this episode included Phoenix from Raven’s Ait, Paul from ANAL, Ben Rampart and Ben 52 from rampART, Lou and Matt from Made Possible by Squatting, and Dissident Island hosts John, Chick Pea, Bryn, Patrick IW. Thank you to Patrick Evans and everyone at Dissident Island for making this audio available to us.
Music: “Cataclysm” by the Flying Luttenbachers, “Hundred Years in Helheim” by Tri-Tachyon, and “The Pharaos Theme” by The Pharaos, all from the Free Music Archive.
Produced by Interference Archive.
LINKS
Dissident Island: http://www.dissidentisland.org/
Squatted Social Centres in London, 2007-2017, with Dissident Island Radio: https://socialcentreslondon.wixsite.com/interferencearchive This episode was created by Patrick for the recent Interference Archive exhibition, Resistance Radio: The People’s Airwaves. (http://interferencearchive.org/resistance-radio-the-peoples-airwaves/)
For more on the history of squatting in London, you can listen to Episode 20 of Audio Interference: http://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-20-squatting-in-london/
Raven’s Ait: “Squatters in the Stream,” on BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7999287.stm “Green-living Squatters: Revolution in Surbiton,” on the Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/green-living-squatters-revolution-in-surbiton-1671326.html
Social Centre Plus: “Anti-cuts jobcentre squatters resist bailiffs,” East London Lines: https://www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/2011/04/unti-cuts-squatters-resisted-eviction-from-deptford-jobcentre/
ANAL: “Squatters turn oligarch's empty London property into homeless shelter,” The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/27/squatters-open-oligarchs-empty-london-property-as-homeless-shelter?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Facebook
rampART on squat!net: https://en.squat.net/tag/rampart/
Made Possible by Squatting: Blog post and lots of pictures on urban75.org: http://www.urban75.org/blog/made-possible-by-squatting-exhibition-15-dock-street-london-e1/
London Action Resource Center: http://larc.space/
Advisory Service for Squatters: https://www.squatter.org.uk/
In this episode of Audio Interference, we speak with Vanessa Nosie, activist, and Carrie Curley, activist and artist, about the Apache Stronghold and their spiritual movement to protect Oak Flat from the foreign mining company Resolution Copper.
A huge thank you to Carrie Curley, Vanessa Nosie, Naelyn Pike, Wendsler Nosie, and the Apache Stronghold for their important and determined fight to protect their land, and for the important message this has for indigneous communities around the world, and for all communities, regarding the way we should respect and relate to our land, environment, and to each other. Thank you Amy Harwood for your support and audio from the walk that is part of this episode. Thank you Cruz for your production help.
We encourage you to call your Senators and Representatives to be sure they support the protection of sacred sites. Ask them to sign on as sponsors of the Save Oak Flat Act, which would repeal the land exchange bill.
Save Oak Flat Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/665
To learn more about the Apache Stronghold, visit their website and social media platforms:
Website: www.apache-stronghold.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/Apache-Stronghold-802193869856079/ Instagram: @protectoakflat
For additional articles and resources about Oak Flat, we recommend: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/oak-flat-arizona-apache-mining_n_5dfa9a7be4b006dceaa7e48c?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cDovL2FwYWNoZS1zdHJvbmdob2xkLmNvbS9hcnRpY2xlcy5odG1s&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFgF1vqhkwFfVe_3oyVFi0zdK_cTjnyOBmO73vuidVgZzWT690YSD1yPZJgEQDMrQ1B9ijdALkhZeYuPydSelgsBaY1udpOhLbZAUbigMZLmOYPf6rq_SoPh9jgLE99oGrB0nB8mMQq4WFxJE_qyJzQ6N5jGu1SPL_F9CXUyOXW2 https://kairoscenter.org/wendsler-nosie-save-oak-flat/ https://truthout.org/articles/the-apache-way-the-march-to-oak-flat/ https://vimeo.com/120753081 https://tucson.com/opinion/local/local-opinion-speak-up-for-oak-flat-before-a-copper/article_3b43fa5f-40c6-5761-afe1-05f6aad17aa6.html https://truthout.org/articles/the-apache-way-the-march-to-oak-flat/ http://www.indianz.com/News/2015/07/20/interview-san-carlos-apache-tr.asp https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/opinion/selling-off-apache-holy-land.html https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2019/02/12/oak-flat-solidarity-walk/?fbclid=IwAR1kwVmHR_EupbVWOyT45hmcpZEj7wG7R6IXez9JLpVpZofGb5Wa0RhXlKk https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/aejjxg/fighting-to-protect-oak-flat https://sacredland.org/oak-flat-united-states/ https://www.democracynow.org/2015/7/17/apache_stronghold_caravan_calls_to_protect
To learn more about the mural by Carrie Curley on the water tower in Oak Flat: https://www.globemiamitimes.com/san-carlos-mural/
Music and Audio in this Episode (in order): Into the Sea by Macroform (intro music) In a Pinch by Macroform (transition music) Tina Anderson walking during the 5th Walk to Oak Flat, recorded by Amy Harwood Drumming and walking during the 5th Walk to Oak Flat, recorded by Amy Harwood Speech by Naelyn Pike during the 5th Walk to Oak Flat, recorded by Amy Harwood Into the Sea by Macroform (outro music)
Produced by Interference Archive.
AK Thompson is an author, activist, and social theorist. Over the summer, he came to Interference Archive to speak about his newest book, Premonitions. Drawing on that material, he explored the relationship between citation and social movements and brought out a new understanding of the political role of archivists.
For accompanying slides, visit: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Vrn2-lsRpR-zKhHye8apmWj-6D8NLR4Do7Aeaf25VNI/edit?usp=sharing
Music: Better Things by Cool Runnings
Produced by Interference Archive
Audio Interference 69: What a DJ really is —- Microbroadcasting with Radio CPR and Prometheus Radio Project
The following is a recording of an event that happened in july of 2019. Archive volunteer Colin moderated a conversation with founding members Marnie Brady, Amanda Huron, and Athena Viscusi of radio CPR a pirate radio station in Mt. pleasant D.C. and Petri Dish, of Radio Mutiny and Prometheus Radio Project.
Speaker Bios: Marnie Brady / DJ Poinsettia launched the Neighborhood Power Hour as part of Radio CPR, Washington, DC where she converged her work in community organizing for immigrant rights, land, & housing with action research interviews & mix tapes over the airwaves. As part of Radio CPR, Marnie started a tech club to learn more about how sound travels. Now in Brooklyn, Marnie is part of the organizing committee for the national Homes for All campaign. She’s starting a job as assistant professor in politics & human rights at Marymount Manhattan in the fall.
DJ Maude Ontario (AKA Amanda Huron) is a co-founder of Radio CPR, a community radio station that broadcast from D.C.’s Mt. Pleasant neighborhood, 1998-2018. She currently works as an associate professor of interdisciplinary social sciences at the University of the District of Columbia, the public university serving Washington, D.C. Her research interests are in urban geography, housing justice, and D.C. history. She plays drums in the bands Puff Pieces and Weed Tree, and is a native of Washington, D.C.
PeteTridish has built studios, raised towers, drafted regulations, passed a law through congress, been the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against media consolidation, started non-profits, and been arrested as a protester on various occasions. He has been a radio pirate, a policy advocate for community media, a carpenter, an environmental educator, a solar energy system installer, a squatter, a homeless shelter volunteer and an activist in many social movements since the age of 16.
Athena Viscusi, Radio Free Mount Pleasant DJ and member of Stand for Our Neighbors.
You can’t see them, but the skies above New York City hold a tangle of transgressive, culture-bearing radio signals. They’re sent from secret rooftop transmitters and pulse imperceptibly across the five boroughs, bringing familiar sounds to simple FM radios in homes and shops throughout tight-knit immigrant neighborhoods. These underground stations are often called pirates for broadcasting on the FM band without a government-issued license.In this episode, we’re sharing excerpts from an event at Interference Archive in July, which featured a conversation between David Goren and Joan Martinez. The event was presented in relation to our summer exhibition, Resistance Radio: The People’s Airwaves, which looked at the history of radio as a medium for grassroots movements and their organizing work.
David Goren is an award winning radio producer and audio archivist based in Brooklyn, NY. He’s created programming for the BBC World Service, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Wall Street Journal magazine, NPR’s Lost and Found Sound series, On the Media, and Afropop Worldwide as well as audio-based installations for the Proteus Gowanus gallery, and the Ethnographic Terminalia Collective. In 2016 he was an artist-in-residence at Wave Farm, a center for the Transmission Arts. Over the past two years David has released “Outlaws of the Airwaves: The Rise of Pirate Radio Station WBAD” for KCRW’s Lost Notes Podcast and The Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map which was featured in The New Yorker Magazine.
Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map: https://www.pirateradiomap.com/ David Goren's audio documentary, "New York City Pirates of the Air": https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p076bp3y "Outlaws of the Airwaves: The Rise of Pirate Radio Station WBAD": https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/lost-notes/outlaws-of-the-airwaves-the-rise-of-pirate-radio-station-wbad
Joan “Radio Free Joanie” Martinez is a Brooklyn-born-and-raised Haitian-American. She attended Brooklyn College twice as an undergrad and is currently working on her Master’s Thesis about “pirate radio” in Brooklyn. She’s laid the groundwork to becoming a successful on-air talent as a podcast host. Pegged as opinionated since a teenager and a smart alec, she brings a perspective that is usually elusive to the diaspora– a female voice that represents the children of Haiti’s “Lost Generation.” She straddles two worlds–the traditional Haitian household and an American growing up in America. She is an enigma at first. Her last name confuses the people she tries to talk to–she’s often pegged as a Latino that just happens to know Haitian-Kreyol. But after a minute of talking to her, people are at ease and fascinated that she is Haitian-American. She speaks the language though her name is Latino and her citizenship is American. Some are still standoffish to her and brush her off. She remains resilient however, a trait found in the Haitian people. They thrive from adversity and feed off obstacles. She is the product of her environment and brings this to her radio broadcasting.
Produced by Interference Archive.
Audio Interference is excited to be bringing you an episode from a guest podcast, Radio Survivor. Radio Survivor is a group of individuals organized to shed light on the ongoing importance of radio. They have a weekly podcast where they interview people involved in wide-ranging and international community radio efforts.
Back in July 2019, Interference Archive volunteers Celia Easton Koehler and Elena Levi spoke with Jennifer Waits and Eric Klein of Radio Survivor about our latest exhibition at Interference Archive. It’s called Resistance Radio: The People’s Airwaves and it’s about the history of radio as a medium for grassroots movements. They spoke with Radio Survivor about the stations, communities and contexts featured in the exhibition, and the process, labor, and networks involved. Some of the seeds of our research actually came from Radio Survivor interviews!
Resistance Radio is on view at the archive through September 29. If you are in New York, come check it out during our open hours: Thursday 1-9pm or Friday through Sunday 12-5pm. You can also check out our website for events or look out for recordings from some events in the fall season of Audio Interference.
A huge thank you to Erik Klein, Jennifer Waits, and everyone from Radio Survivor for speaking with us about Resistance Radio: The People’s Airwaves.
More information about Radio Survivor and the original interview: radiosurvivor.com http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2019/07/30/podcast-204-resistance-radio-the-peoples-airwaves/
More information about Resistance Radio: The Peoples Airwaves: http://interferencearchive.org/resistance-radio-the-peoples-airwaves/ resistanceradio.online
Produced by Interference Archive.
In this episode, we’re speaking with activists, organizers, musicians and artists who are a part of The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The movement is building on the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968, a national movement led by Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Junior to unite the poor. We focus our conversation on the role music and art plays, and has played, in this movement.
A huge thank you to Ciara Taylor, Pauline PIsano, and Charon Hribrar for speaking with for this episode.
To learn more about the Poor People’s Campaign, visit their website at https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/.
To download a copy of the songbook, produced by the Poor People’s Campaign with artwork by Justseeds collective: https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/SON001_Songbook.pdf
This episode coincides with the exhibition at Interference Archive Everybody’s Got A Right To Live: The Poor People’s Campaign 1968 & Now: http://interferencearchive.org/everybodys-got-a-right-to-live-the-poor-peoples-campaign-1968-now/
This is the last episode of spring 2019 Audio Interference season. We’re taking a break for the summer, but we’ll be back again in the fall with a brand new season that explores the culture of social movements globally. While we’re off enjoying the summer sun, we’d love to hear from you with feedback about our episodes so far, and about what you’re interested in listening to in the future! Please fill out this survey to tell us why you love audio interference, and what topics you would like us to cover in the year ahead: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QUf3nPwdo7ewDaymPsgW73biPu-42iWwlF4Z-FI3QoE/viewform?edit_requested=true
Thanks, and have a nice summer!
Music you heard today is by:
50 Years After MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign, 2,500+ Arrested Over 6 Weeks Calling for Moral Revival, Democracy Now, June 25, 2018
Audio recordings from an action at Wall Street in March 2018, with help by Lu Aya from the Peace Poets and the Rude Mechanical Orchestra.
Ciara and Paulina sing “I want to Lift My People Up” by Vi Rose.
In the past few weeks, regular listeners to the podcast have heard an episode on community internet, and another celebrating libraries. This week, we’ll combine the best of both worlds.
Today, we'll chat with Alison Macrina, Founder and Executive Director of the Library Freedom Project, an organization that’s making an impact in local communities, helping reduce the harm that people face online from hackers, law enforcement and major corporations. We’ll learn of the organization's showdown with the Department of Homeland Security and hear of its efforts to scale up to a library near you.
To learn more about Library Freedom Project and Library Freedom Institute, visit www.libraryfreedom.org.
Music in this episode (“Dusting,” “Stilt,” “Borough” & “Hickory Interlude”) by Blue Dot Sessions - www.sessions.blue
Produced by Interference Archive.
In today’s episode, we’ll learn about community networks around the world, including NYC Mesh, FunkFeuer, and Rhizomatica. Community Networks offer local communities the opportunity to own and control their communication infrastructure.
To learn more about NYC Mesh visit www.nycmesh.net.
To learn more about Rhizomatica, including projects outside of Oaxaca, Mexico, visit www.rhizomatica.org.
To learn more about FunkFeuer, visit www.funkfeuer.at.
Thanks to Jonathan Dahan, Myf Ma, Aaron Kaplan, and Peter Bloom for speaking with us for this episode.
Music: Onward & Upward by junior85.
Produced by Interference Archive.
We’re back to continue our series on radical, community libraries! In this episode, we chat with Ola Ronke Akinmowo of the Free Black Women’s Library, Dev Aujla of Sorted Library, and Jen Hoyer and Daniel Pecoraro from our own Interference Archive library.
To learn more about the Free Black Women’s Library, stay up to date about future pop ups, and find out where to donate books, visit her site, follow the library on social media @thefreeblackwomenslibrary, and consider supporting the project via Patreon.
Here’s a short list of reading recommendations from Ola Ronke: Audre Lorde, Gloria Naylor, Buchi Emecheta, Pat Parker, June Jordan, Nnedi Okorafor, especially Who Fears Death, Octavia Butler, especially Parable of the Sower, Zora Neale Hurston, especially Dust Tracks on the Road, This Thing Around My Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sula by Toni Morrison, Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi, Things We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons, All About Love by bell hooks, Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires, I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé, The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clementine Wamariya, Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper.
To learn more about the Sorted Library, including the date of their next open house, you can follow them on Instagram @SortedLibrary or visit them at sortedlibrary.com.
To learn more about the Interference Archive library, visit our website, or visit us in person. The archive (and library) is open to the public Thursdays-Sundays.
A huge thank you to Ola Ronke Akinmowo, Dev Aujla, Jen Hoyer, and Daniel Pecoraro for talking with us and the important and exciting work you do!
Music: “Good Times” and “Laid Back Fuzz” Podington Bear
Produced by Interference Archive.
This episode features an interview with artist and collector Alison Alder, recorded last summer when Alison visited New York. Alison Alder is a visual artist whose work blurs the line between studio, community and social/political art practice. Her formative years as an artist were spent working in the screen-printing workshops of Megalo (Canberra) and Redback Graphix (Wollongong/Sydney) where she was co-director from 1985–1993. The next major period of her art practice was spent working within Indigenous organisations in the Northern Territory, primarily for Julalikari Council in Tennant Creek. Alder received an International Year of Tolerance Fellowship from the Australia Council in recognition of her work toward social justice and equity through art practice. Alder is currently Head of the Printmedia and Drawing Workshop at the Australian National University School of Art.
Alison is also the organizer of Interference Archive's current exhibition, Hi-Viz: Australian Political Posters 1979-2019. Hi-Viz, an exhibition of screen-printed posters that provide a visual commentary of politics and life in Australia over the last four decades, is on display through April 14.
Here's an image of the Redback Graphix poster Alison refers to:
https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/85.1983/
Music: "Amends" by Mere Women.
Produced by Interference Archive.
The Professional Staff Congress, the union of the faculty and staff at the City University of New York, is currently bargaining a contract which includes a flagship demand of seven thousand dollars per course for adjunct faculty — which would finally earn many adjuncts a living wage and push forward a national conversation about funding for public education.
Various adjunct organizers are trying to push the union towards a strike in order to win the demand, but they have faced resistance from union leadership, as striking is illegal for public sector workers in New York State and comes with tremendous risks. Organizers in favor of a strike have united under a campaign they have called, "7K or Strike!" In this episode, we hear from various union members about how they believe they will win this demand. To learn more about the 7K demand itself and the daily reality for adjuncts at CUNY, you can listen to episode 51, titled: "Adjunctification at CUNY".
Music: La Fatigue et l'Insupportable Bonheur du Prochain by Bernard Grancher New York Town by Woody Guthrie
Produced by the Interference Archive
This episode of Audio Interference features highlights from an event at the archive with Keith Brooks and Phil Brown, in which they shared their experiences in the critical psychology movement that was a part of the revolutionary environment at Alternate U. Phil and Keith helped set up the organization Psychologists for a Democratic Society (an offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society), which published a newspaper under the same name.
Radical psychology and the politics of mental illness were an important part of social movements in the 1970s and 1980s, and central issues in free education experiments, including Alternate U. In 1970, Keith Brooks ran a course called Towards a Radical Psychology, centered around psychology in the context of the global liberation struggle and the questions of “what is its role and whose side is it on?” Phil Brown ran a course called Demystification of Contemporary Psychology, challenging what he called the “Myth of Mental Illness.”
Music: "The Birds & The Bees" by The 2 Bears.
Produced by Interference Archive.
In this episode of Audio Interference, you'll hear a recording of an event held at the archive in October of 2018. The event was called “Politics of Sound: Listening to the Archive,” and it was a discussion about the various ways archiving sound can be a political act, including how sound archives can support organizing work, and how sound collections can contribute to the creation of historical memory, broadening the range of stories that are part of our collective history.
Speakers included Natiba Guy-Clement, Special Collections Manager at the Brooklyn Public Library, home of the Civil Rights in Brooklyn Oral History Collection; Daniel Horowitz, oral historian and poet, currently working on a historical memory project based in Bay St Louis, Mississippi; Samara Smith, Associate Professor at SUNY, who documented the sounds of Occupy Wall Street; and Mario Alvarez, one of the creators of Columbia Life Histories, a series of oral history interviews with graduate students at Columbia University.
For more information, visit: https://borrow.bklynlibrary.org/r1s/iii/encore/?lang=eng (search "civil rights in Brooklyn") http://brooklynink.org/2011/12/26/39230-the-anarchivists-who-owns-the-occupy-wall-street-narrative/ https://columbialifehistories.com/
Music: "Telling Me Yes" by Ryan Anderson.
Produced by Interference Archive.
“Our lending policy is: as many books as you want, for as long as you want. We want people to take the time to live with the books as long as they need to, to figure out how they fit into the larger picture of how they live.” -- Dawn Finley, FLOW
In this episode, we ask the questions: What does it mean to be a radical, community library? What are the goals, responsibilities, and impacts of such an organization? We do so through conversations with Laura Moulton of Streetbooks, Melissa Marturano of Books Through Bars, Dawn Finley of FLOW, and Julia of the ABC No Rio Zine Library.
To learn more about Streetbooks visit their website at—http://streetbooks.org/ and read this NYT article about them: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/10/us/homeless-outreach-in-volumes-books-by-bike-for-outside-people-in-oregon.html
To learn more about Books through Bars visit their website at—https://booksthroughbarsnyc.org/ Read an interview with founder vikki law—http://artfcity.com/2012/09/05/the-abc-no-rio-interviews-vikki-law/ and this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/opinion/books-prison-packages-new-york.html
To stay up to date about what’s going on in Pennsylvania Prisons see the links below: —https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/incarcerated-pennsylvanians-now-have-to-pay-150-to-read-we-should-all-be-outraged/2018/10/11/51f548b8-cbd9-11e8-a85c-0bbe30c19e8f_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.49acb26c7a96 —https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/08/29/pennsylvania-prisons-are-locked-down-after-unknown-substances-leave-hospitalized/?utm_term=.ffa16cd982d —http://www2.philly.com/philly/news/pennsylvania-prison-department-corrections-john-wetzel-security-plan-books-through-bars-k2-20181019.html?fbclid=IwAR1mWpHFFCjSgWWiE0AXCKUUfGW6DQBoxmhyKHgcbfMc2KNCgtZdLbU8auA
For those interested in what FLOW is up to: http://feministlibraryonwheels.com/ and https://lithub.com/the-feminist-library-on-wheels-a-roaming-tool-for-social-justice/.
ABC No Rio Zine Library Contact Information: http://www.abcnorio.org/pcgi-bin/suite/calendar/calendar.cgi?request=detail&website=default&event_id=12029
A huge Thank You to Laura Moulton, Melissa Marturano, Dawn Finley, and Julia for engaging us in conversation and for the important work you do! Stay tuned for Radical Access, Part II.
Music: “Bronco Romp,” by Waylon Thornton; “Feel Good (Instrumental),” by Broke For Free; “Luminous,” by Broke For Free; “Live on BSR,” by Juan Wauters.
Produced by Interference Archive.
“I think we were interested in finding a true story. We were interested in telling the truth, not to make a propaganda film and not to make a film that would make people feel heroic. We wanted to make a film that was both sympathetic to the project and its goals and purposes, and at the same time was realistic about the world that it was operating in.” - Robert Machover
In this episode we speak with Norman Fruchter and Robert Machover about their collaboration as filmmakers and instructors at the Free University of New York (FUNY), a 1960s experiment in radical education. Fruchter presented a course called ‘Film Form: Propaganda into Art’, and Machover offered a workshop with the aim of producing a film collectively under the title ‘Filmmaking’. This led to creation of the film Dog Burning at Noon, a short clip of which plays during the episode. This episode also includes a discussion of and short clip from Machover and Fruchter’s 1966 film Troublemakers, which chronicled a group of young activists who worked with a predominately black community in their struggle against poverty and low quality housing in Newark.
A huge thank you to Jakob Jakobsen, who moderated the discussion and organized the event as part of Interference Archive’s current exhibition Free Education! Rooted in an examination of the history of the Free University of New York, the exhibition aims to generate conversation within our community–across generations and socio-economic realities –about what it looks like to reimagine possibilities for education. The exhibition is currently running at Interference Archive through January 27, 2019. Thanks also to Norman Fruchter and Robert Machover.
Music: "Hello Vietnam," by Johnny Wright.
Produced by Interference Archive.
“I remember walking home from that huge protest and feeling this sense of huge hope in the air...And it was just really exciting and it felt like things actually could change.” --Becca Shaw Glazer
In this episode, we speak with activists who participated in protests against the World Trade Organization in the 1990s and 2000s. The 1999 Seattle protest against the WTO is often seen as the beginning of a worldwide anti-globalization movement and the Indymedia movement. About 40,000 people took to the streets to express their dissent, and protestors successfully blocked delegates from entering the convention center, delaying the meeting. The protests became known as “The Battle of Seattle” because of the police violence that ensued in response. We focus on the protests that took place in Seattle, and then share an interview with someone who participated in WTO protests in Cancun, one of the protests that took place globally as a result.
A huge thank you to our interviewees for speaking with us for this episode: Becca Shaw Glaser, Danielle Chynoweth, Mark Enslin, and Celeste. Many of these people were involved in founding the Independent Media Center in Urbana, IL and the radio station WRFU, and became connected to Interference Archive when they began airing episodes of this podcast.
Archival materials used in this episode include: Democracy Now, 12.2.1999 Broadcast, Drum Circle from WTO Protest in Seattle and interviews with activists Democracy Now, 12.3.1999 Broadcast, Activists chanting and interviews with activists Democracy Now, 12.6.1999 Broadcast, WTO Talks Collapse
Courtesy of Celeste, who was working with pirate radio and independent media at the time, we have been able to include recordings of the 2003 WTO protest in Cancun, including an interview with the Beehive Collective and with Celeste herself. You can also listen to these recordings at Interference Archive.
To learn more about the Battle of Seattle, and international WTO protests:
60 Minute reporting of Seattle protests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i_4xEBCdys Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/event/Seattle-WTO-protests-of-1999 “Curfew in effect as Seattle struggles to control WTO protests,” http://www.cnn.com/US/9911/30/wto.04/ “State of Emergency in Seattle,” https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/dec/01/wto “Seattle WTO Uprising Still a Force in World Events, 15 Years Later,” http://berkeleyjournal.org/2014/12/seattle-wto-uprising-still-a-force-in-world-events-15-years-later/ “WTO Meeting and Protests in Seattle (1999),” http://www.historylink.org/File/9183 & http://www.historylink.org/File/9213 “20 Years of the WTO: A Story of Poverty and Protest,” https://www.telesurenglish.net//english/analysis/20-Years-of-the-WTO-A-Story-of-Poverty-and-Protest-20150415-0017.html
You can also visit the archive for print materials related to these protests.
To learn more about Lee Kyung Hae and his leadership among the activist and farming communities: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/16/northkorea.wto https://viacampesina.org/en/take-agriculture-out-of-the-wto-farmer-lee-kyung-hae-reproducing-his-letter-from-2003/ https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/16/world/farming-is-korean-s-life-and-he-ends-it-in-despair.html
Produced by Interference Archive.
“We knew it was illegal, and we knew the FCC would probably come after us at some point, and they did.”
This episode focuses on two New York pirate radio stations--Steal This Radio and WBAD--both of which were active in the 1990s. We interview Arrow Chrome, one of the founders of Steal This Radio, a pirate station that grew out of a Lower East Side community of squatters and activists. The episode also includes some audio from an event at Interference Archive featuring David Goren, creator of the Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map, and DJ Cintronics, the founder of the unlicensed hip hop station WBAD, which became known for playing music you couldn’t hear on mainstream hip hop radio.
Two New York Times articles on Steal This Radio from the 1990s:
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/19/nyregion/neighborhood-report-villages-east-and-west-fm-mouse-roars-at-fcc.html https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/27/arts/pirate-radio-in-touch-with-the-village-not-the-fcc.html
DJ Arrow Chrome: https://www.facebook.com/DJ-Arrow-Chrome-276743467947/
About Charas El Bohio: https://www.placematters.net/node/1432
http://thevillager.com/2018/04/29/the-story-of-chino-and-charas-activist-hopeful-for-old-p-s-64s-return/
Dj Cintronics: https://www.facebook.com/DJ-CINTRONICS-211556268893/ https://www.mixcloud.com/djcintronicspodcast/
David Goren’s audio documentary on WBAD, “Outlaws of the Airwaves:” https://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/lost-notes/outlaws-of-the-airwaves-the-rise-of-pirate-radio-station-wbad
Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map: https://www.pirateradiomap.com/
Music: “Version City Lady” by Rocker T and the Version City Rockers, a recording made at a benefit show for Steal This Radio in 1998.
Produced by Interference Archive.
"There's only a certain amount of time that a person can languish in prison while they prepare for a trial."
To kick off our fall season of Audio Interference, we're speaking with folks from the criminal justice reform organization Just Leadership USA about their work to cut the US correctional population in half by 2030. Just Leadership USA empowers people most affected by incarceration to drive policy reform. In this first episode, we interview Marvin Mayfield, Nishan “Prince” Jackson, and Shanequa Charles, three of the folks who are spearheading a city and state wide campaign to end mass incarceration in New York.
To learn more about Just Leadership USA, visit www.justleadershipusa.org. There you will find more information about #FreeNewYork as well as their other campaigns. www.justleadershipusa.org/freenewyork
The bills that Shanequa, Prince, and Marvin worked for and lobbied on behalf of during the 2018 legislative session did not pass. The following is a statement from Just Leadership USA aboutthe state of the bills: https://www.justleadershipusa.org/freenewyork-campaign-responds-to-new-york-states-failure-to-overhaul-bail-discovery-speedy-trial-law-in-2018-legislative-session-statement-from-erin-l-george-new-york-state-campaign-coo/
And here are links to the bail reform and discovery reform bills: Senate Bill S3579A: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2017/s3579/amendment/a
And Senate bills S7722: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2017/s7722
Information about how to support the bills can be found at the links above. If you are interested in learning more about criminal justice reform, you can also checkout our episode from last season of Audio Interference about the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, which pays bail for people who can’t afford it in NYC, and the Close Rikers campaign fighting to close the jails on Rikers Island: http://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-28-brooklyn-bail-fund-and-close-rikers/
A huge thank you to folks at Just Leadership USA for collaborating with us on this episode.
Produced by Interference Archive.
Music: "The Garden State" by Audiobinger.
"They saw this region as affected by a kind of colonial influence from the larger urban areas, sort of extracting resources from Central Appalachia historically, for over a hundred years, and not giving anything back."
In this episode of Audio Interference, we’re looking into Appalachian Movement Press, an offset print shop and publishing house that was based in Huntington, West Virginia, from 1969 - 1979. We speak with Shaun Slifer, artist, writer, self-taught historian, and Creative Director & Curator at the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, about his research into Appalachian Movement Press and about the identity movement in Appalachia in the 70s.
To learn more about the article Shaun wrote for Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture: https://justseeds.org/product/signal06/
You can read an excerpt of Shaun's article in the Signal:06 issue here: https://justseeds.org/appalachian-movement-press-an-excerpt-from-signal06/
And to learn more about Shaun's research process, see: https://justseeds.org/underground-publishing-in-west-virginia-during-the-1970s-researching-appalachian-movement-press/
Music in this episode is from the album They'll Never Keep Us Down: Women's Coal Mining Songs. A copy of the album is available at the archive. Song credits (listed in order):
"Dream of a Miner's Child" (adapted by Phyllis Boyens, Hazel Dickens and Ken Irwin) sung by Phyllis Boyens "Hello Coal Miner" (Sarah Ogan Gunning) sung by Sarah Gunning "Coal Mining Woman" (Hazel Dickens) sung by Hazel Dickens
Produced by Interference Archive.
"We were exploding and we were asking women all over to explode with us."
SisterSerpents was a radical feminist art collective founded in Chicago in 1989. In this episode, we speak with Jeramy Turner, one of the group's founders. She explains the history of SisterSerpents and how they used art as their weapon in the fight against women's oppression.
Interference Archive houses some of SisterSerpents material. Additional material may be found in Loyola University of Chicago's Women and Leadership Archives.
Music: "Buzz Chant" by U.S. Girls and "That Breed" by Weyes Blood, courtesy of Free Music Archive.
Produced by Interference Archive.
Letters from Comrades on the Inside: In this episode, we hear from Annette Farrell, a contributor to Survived and Punished's Inside-Outside Newsletter about her experiences as an incarcerated person and her thoughts on justice and abolition.
This episode of Audio Interference is part of a series in collaboration with Survived and Punished, a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and the culture of violence that contributes to it.
Visit audiointerference.org to listen to more letters from their comrades on the inside as well as a longer interview with two Survived and Punished Members. Visit www.survivedandpunishedny.org to read Survived & Punished NY’s newsletters and explore their work.
A huge thank you to Annette Farrel for sharing your stories. We'd also like to thank Lae Sway, Yves Tong Nguyen, Heena, Zoe Vongtau, Red Schulte, Mariah Hill, and Martina Ilunga, along with everyone else at Survived & Punished, for working with us on this episode.
To learn more about Survived and Punished NY, visit survivedandpunishedny.org
Read the latest edition of Survived and Punished’s newsletter, Free : Survivors: https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org/newsletter-campaign/
Music from this episode (in order of appearance):
“Divide” by Six Time Users, from the album, Live at WFMU for Janky Ray’s Radio Riot 6/16/18
Letters from Comrades on the Inside: In this episode, we hear from Andrea Benson, a contributor to Survived and Punished's Inside-Outside Newsletter about her experiences as an incarcerated person and her thoughts on justice and abolition.
This episode of Audio Interference is part of a series in collaboration with Survived and Punished, a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and the culture of violence that contributes to it.
Visit audiointerference.org to listen to more letters from their comrades on the inside as well as a longer interview with two Survived and Punished Members. Visit www.survivedandpunishedny.org to read Survived & Punished NY’s newsletters and explore their work. We'd also like to thank Lae Sway, Yves Tong Nguyen, Heena, Zoe Vongtau, Red Schulte, Mariah Hill, and Martina Ilunga, along with everyone else at Survived & Punished, for working with us on this episode.
To learn more about Survived and Punished NY, visit survivedandpunishedny.org
Read the latest edition of Survived and Punished’s newsletter, Free : Survivors: https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org/newsletter-campaign/
Music from this episode (in order of appearance):
“Divide” by Six Time Users, from the album, Live at WFMU for Janky Ray’s Radio Riot 6/16/18
"Adjunctification is really this process of replacing full time academic positions with part time academic positions at lower wages and usually inferior, if any, benefits as a cost saving measure."
In this episode, we speak with Carly Smith and Susan DiRaimo, two adjunct professors at the City University of New York, the public university system of New York City and the largest urban university system in the country. They tell us about the daily reality for adjuncts and how their union, the Professional Staff Congress, helps them fight for better wages and working conditions. Their current battle is for a minimum salary of $7K per course that they teach, a radical demand that could finally bring many adjuncts out of poverty and change the national conversation about funding for public education.
Music: "Better World," by Woody Guthrie.
Produced by Interference Archive.
Military Dissent - Mixtape 017 was put together and produced by Kevin Basl, a writer and musician living near Ithaca, NY. He is a member of About Face (formerly Iraq Veterans Against the War) and Veterans for Peace.
The music on this mixtape was inspired by those antiwar dissenters who know the inner-workings of the U.S. military best. Most of the songs were written and/or performed by veterans or service members. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Iraq Veterans Against the War (now "About Face") and the G.I. resistance movements of the past half-century produced the countercultures from which this music emerged. Not surprisingly, most can be categorized as punk, folk, blues or rap--the music of the People--with lyrical content ranging from remorseful warnings to potential enlistees, to revolutionary convictions, to gallows humor. This mixtape also includes clips from interviews, public testimonies, street actions and other media, providing context for the songs. This is just a sampling of a well-stocked, but under-appreciated, subgenre of antiwar music.
"It’s like we’re always reinventing the wheel, but some of these posters tell you what worked and what didn’t work a generation ago or more." - Carol Wells
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics, based in Los Angeles, is home to a collection of over 90,000 protest graphics and the largest collection of post World War II posters in the United States. In this episode, Carol Wells, Founder and Executive Director of CSPG, gives a tour of the archive to Kevin Caplicki, one of the co-founders of Interference Archive and a member of Justseeds Artist Collective.
For more information about CSPG, visit: http://www.politicalgraphics.org/
Music: "Favorite Secrets" by Waylon Thornton, courtesy of Free Music Archive.
Produced by Interference Archive.
"All the messages from pop culture present Asian American as an apolitical thing. It was really shocking and liberating to find out that actually, Asian American politics was rooted in radical organizing and rooted in grassroots arts movements." -- Ryan Wong
This episode of Audio Interference focuses on Basement Workshop (active 1970-1986), an arts and political organization based in New York City's Chinatown that served as a hub for the developing Asian American movement. Elena Levi speaks to curator and writer Ryan Wong, whose exhibition, Serve the People: The Asian American Movement in New York was presented at Interference Archive in 2013-2014. The episode also includes portions of Ryan's talk at an event celebrating the release of the latest issue of Signal (http://s1gnal.org/), a journal of international political graphics and culture.
Ryan's article on Hyperallergic includes more information on Basement Workshop and other Chinatown arts organizations: https://hyperallergic.com/330442/a-brief-history-of-the-art-collectives-of-nycs-chinatown/
More on Serve the People: http://interferencearchive.org/serve-the-people-the-asian-american-movement-in-new-york/
Issue #6 of Signal: https://justseeds.org/product/signal06/
This episode features the song "Yellow Pearl" by Chris Kando Iijima, Joanne Nobuko Miyamoto, "Charlie" Chin from the recording entitled A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle by Asians in America, PAR01020, courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. (p) (c) 1973. Used by permission.
Link: https://folkways.si.edu/chris-kando-iijima-joanne-nobuko-miyamoto-charlie-chin/a-grain-of-sand-music-for-the-struggle-by-asians-in-america/american-folk-protest/music/album/smithsonian Other music used includes "Artifical Intelligence" and "One and Only" by Ryan Andersen, courtesy of the Free Music Archive.
Produced by Interference Archive.
This episode features a performance by Koyt Far Dayn Fardakht (http://koytfilth.band) at Interference Archive's 2017 block party, as well as an interview with the band, , who describe their music as "queer/trans antizionist Yiddish punk," broadcast live on Radio Free Gowanus (www.radiofreegowanus.com).
All music by Koyt Far Dayn Fardakht. Produced by Interference Archive.
"Other cities are trying to get rid of their green space. If they get rid of their green space they can stop people from public assembly, which they're nervous about." - Bill DiPaola
In this episode, we focus on the history of New York's community gardens, specifically on the Lower East Side. Matt Patterson and Mike Dola talk to author, journalist, and activist Bill Weinberg, as well as Bill DiPaola, one of the founders of the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (www.morusnyc.org). The mission of MoRUS is to preserve the history of grassroots activism and promote environmentally-sound, community-based urban ecologies.
Music: "Lower East Side" by David Peel and "Smoke" by Rafael Archangel.
To see Mike Dola's images of La Plaza Cultural (http://laplazacultural.com), one of the stops on Bill's walking tour, check out our blog at: http://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-47-lower-east-side-community-gardens/
Produced by Interference Archive.
"Puppetry, especially giant puppets, gives people glimpses of this bigger reality that is beyond what our minds normally inhabit." -Joe Therrien, Bread and Puppet Theater
In this episode of audio interference, we are speaking with folks from Bread and Puppet Theater, one of the oldest, self-supporting theatrical companies in the country. Bread and Puppet have been creating performances that tackle social justice issues, and feeding people homemade sourdough bread, since 1963.
We speak with puppeteers Amy Trompetter, Linda Elbow, Josh Krugman, Sam Wilson, and Joe Therrien about the group’s history and legacy of performance and activism work.
To learn more about bread and puppet, visit their website at www.breadandpuppet.org
We also have print materials from the Bread and Puppet Press in our archive, which you can stop by and see during our open hours, Thursday, 1-9pm and Friday-Sunday, 12-5pm.
The music in this episode is from "The Honey Lets Go Home Opera" by Bread and Puppet Theater, performed at a Theater for a New City in New York in December 2017.
Produced by Interference Archive.
"When I first took karate, I was already an activist. And I could see right away what this could do for women in the 70s." -- Annie Ellman
In this episode, we talk to two groups that teach self-defense skills: Pop Gym (popgym.org)and the Center for Anti-Violence Education (caeny.org). We hear from CAE founder Annie Ellman, along with Izzy Finkelstein and Rachel Marks, and Pop Gym founder Grey Cohen.
This episode includes audio from a self-defense demo by the CAE Peer Educators at our block party in September 2017, originally broadcast live on Radio Free Gowanus (www.radiofreegowanus.org).
Music: "Dawn II" by Swelling, "Hit or Miss" by Odetta.
Produced by Interference Archive.
On February 9, 2018, Interference Archive presented a talk by Silvia Federici, co-founder of the Wages for Housework movement, on the publication of her new book, The New York Wages for Housework Committee, 1972-1977. Throughout the 1970s, the Wages for Housework movement developed an analysis of women’s reproductive labor— “housework” broadly conceived— as a primary site for mobilization. The movement, publication, and Federici's talk ask us: How do we understand and value our own reproductive labor? How can we organize around this work in a way that is transformative both of our own lives and builds a collective opposition to a global capitalist system?
For more information about Silvia's new book: https://www.akpress.org/wages-for-housework.html
For more information about Silvia Federici, check out Audio Interference Episode 22 (http://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-22-silvia-federici/), in which Silvia talks not only about Wages for Housework, but also about her collection of anarchist and communist 45s from the 1960s.
You might also be interested in a few more events coming up at Interference Archive: Chicago-based feminist art collective Sister Serpents: http://interferencearchive.org/sister-serpents/ Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon: http://interferencearchive.org/2018-artfeminism-wikipedia-edit-a-thon/
The song you hear at the end of this episode is “Avete mai guardato” by Amalia Goffredo.
Produced by Interference Archive.
"People have made this false equivalency between punishment and safety, and so I think in the work that we’re doing, always, we’re trying to put the emphasis on health. We’re trying to put the emphasis on freedom." - Imani Brown
In this episode, we catch up with the organizers of the Close Rikers campaign, featured in episode 28. Louise Barry speaks to Imani Brown, Organizing Coordinator at the Katal Center for Health, Equity, and Justice, about changes to the campaign since Mayor Di Blasio announced his plan to close Rikers Island.
Learn more at www.closerikers.org or at www.katalcenter.org.
Music featured in this episode: "Resiste!" by El Zombi Flash.
Produced by Interference Archive.
In this episode of Audio Interference, we’re chatting with two veteran-led projects: Frontline Paper (a project of Frontline Arts) and About Face: Veterans Against the War. While their techniques are vastly different, both are building communities that challenge and subvert the stereotypes of what veterans can and should be.
For more information about Frontline Paper or Frontline Arts, visit frontlinearts.org or @Frontline_Arts
To learn more about About Face: Veterans Against the War, check out ivaw.org or @vetsaboutface
Our thanks to David Keefe, Eli Wright, Claude Copeland and Matt Howard.
Music:
Postmodern Cloud Modifications/ Gravity's Rainbow by The Fucked Up Beat is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.
The Myth of Information/ Pattern Recognition by The Fucked Up Beat is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.
Produced by Interference Archive.
"My favorite thing is just the dialogue that gets created, and having people understand a little bit more about their communities and the potential for them to slow down or halt directions that they may not want it to go in."
In this episode, we talk to Dan Kaminsky and Michael Higgins Jr of Social Justice Tours (www.socialjusticetours.com). Social Justice Tours uses tours as a medium to dig beneath the surface of what New Yorkers regularly see. We aim to engage New Yorkers in a critical dialogue about the past, present and future of our city, from the perspective of marginalized populations. The ultimate aim is to assist in movement building; that is to disperse information, expose injustice, and highlight inequality in a digestible, understandable way to encourage thought and inspire action. The group offers tours focusing on Trump's influence in midtown, gentrification in Williamsburg, and the radical history of Lower Manhattan. In this episode, Rob Smith and Tyler McBrien take a tour on environmental justice in Gowanus.
Produced by Interference Archive.
"Anybody can join. There's so many different access points for you to join the movement to say no to white nationalism, and there's so many ways to say no."
no. NOT EVER will be at Interference Archive in early 2018.
If You Don’t They Will’s no. NOT EVER. installation and accompanying workshops provide an anti-racist, anti-fascist framework for understanding the rise of white nationalism in the current moment. This installation draws inspiration from research and organizing work against white nationalism by members and from interviews with rural activists who worked to fight white nationalism in their communities in the 1980’s and 1990’s at the height of the “Northwest Territorial Imperative.” If You Don’t They Will has now interviewed 20+ organizers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho that represent complex intersections of race, gender, class and culture involved in this resistance movement.
Produced by Interference Archive.
"I think we are, as immigrants, left out. Our voices are erased from the narrative. It's not that we don't want to tell our stories. It's that there are no spaces for us to tell our stories." - Lorena Kourousias
This episode of Audio Interference focuses on the Monument Quilt, a collective art project and an on-going collection of stories from survivors of rape and abuse, written, stitched, and painted onto red fabric. We speak with Lorena Kourousias, a social worker and activist who works with immigrant women, about the Monument Quilt's project at the US-Mexico border on the 100th day of Trump's presidency.
For more information about The Monument Quilt, visit www.themonumentquilt.org
Information about the border protest can be found here: https://themonumentquilt.org/massive-protest/
The Monument Quilt is one of Interference Archive's collaborators featured in the exhibition, Take Back the Fight: http://interferencearchive.org/take-back-the-fight/
Music featured in this episode: "The Beach Era (Djef Mix)" by El Remold.
Produced by Interference Archive.
"To be healthy, or even to be seen as someone who deserves care, you have to look a very specific way, and those are ways that are often privileged in our society, so white, able-bodied, thin, rich...we believe that every person gets to have bodily autonomy and define for themselves: what does healing look like for me right now? what does health mean for me?"
In this episode of Audio Interference, we are speaking with folks from Harriet’s Apothecary, an intergenerational, gender nonconforming collective of healers, artists, health professionals, magicians and activists who are expanding the way we understand health. Speakers Adaku Utah, Naimah Efia Johnson and Beatrice Anderson talk about the legacy of healing, the connection between health and abolitionism, and the community healing spaces they create for people who identify as black, indigenous and people of color.
To learn more about Harriet's Apothecary, visit their website at www.harrietsapothecary.com. There you can find their oracle deck project, "365 days of affirming black life and amplifying black love": www.harrietsapothecary.com/new-blog
The music in this episode include "We are the Ones" by Sweet Honey in the Rock and "Funkadelic" by CSC Funk Band.
Produced by Interference Archive.
This week we're talking to Sascha Altman DuBrul, the co-founder of the Icarus Project, a radical peer-to-peer mental health support group, about mad pride and radical mental health. The organization started in 2003 when DuBrul and a few friends started traveling the country and talking to people who had been diagnosed as bipolar or schizophrenic but rejected the dominant models of treatment. The Icarus Project is active nationally and at the local level: National Chapter: theicarusproject.net NYC Chapter: www.nycicarus.org
You can read work published by DuBrul and other members of the Icarus Project at Interference Archive. Some titles include:
Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness Harm Reduction Guide to Coming off Psychiatric Drugs Madness & Oppression: A Mad Maps Guide
(Images on our blog at: http://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-38-sascha-altman-dubrul/)
DuBrul has written recently about spirituality and mental health on his website Maps to the Other Side: http://www.mapstotheotherside.net/
Music: "Outside the Terminal" by Blue Dot Sessions "500 Channels" by Choking Victim from No Gods/No Managers (1999) "What Does Anybody Know About Anything" by Chris Zabriskie "I Don't See the Branches I See the Leaves" by Chris Zabriskie
Produced by Interference Archive.
"Even if it seems like i doesn't directly relate to food, it does. Food relates to housing, to life, to water, to land." - Qiana Mickie
This episode includes an interview with Qiana Mickie, Executive Director of Just Food (www.justfood.org), about the challenges of working toward fairer food access in New York and the relationships between food justice and other social movements. We also talk to Jen Hoyer and Maggie Schreiner, curators of Fair Food Nation, Interference Archive's recent exhibition at the Ace Hotel.
Music: "One," by Red Coat Charmers, and "Feet You're Standing On," by Rough Housers.
Produced by Interference Archive.
$pread magazine was an award winning publication produced by and for sex workers from 2005-2011. In 2015, The Feminist Press at CUNY published an anthology of some of its best material. In this week’s episode, we’ll hear from two of its editors, Eliyanna Kaiser and Rachel Aimee, as they discuss the history of the magazine, the evolving depiction of sex workers in mass media, and what the future may hold for the sex workers’ rights movement.
Advocacy and organizing groups for sex workers and their allies:
Sex Workers Project, part of the Urban Justice Center - http://sexworkersproject.org
Red Umbrella Project - http://redumbrellaproject.org
SWOP - Sex Workers Outreach Project, A national network with links to regional chapters - http://www.new.swopusa.org
Music: “All Will See,” “Traces,” and “Whispers” by Hyson. “Great is the Contessa” by Blue Dot Sessions.
Produced by Interference Archive.
Interference Archive’s summer 2017 exhibition Take Back the Fight: Resisting Sexual Violence from the Ground Up--a collaboration with Lesbian Herstory Archives--focuses on organized responses to gender and sexual violence, highlighting the ways individuals and communities have developed creative and powerful grassroots and non-institutional justice and healing practices. In this episode of Audio Interference, we talk to the organizers of the exhibition: Lani Hanna, Melissa Forbis, Rachel Corbman, Monica Johnson, and Louise Barry.
Take Back the Fight is on view now at Interference Archive, and will be up through October 29. The music and spoken word pieces featured in this episode are from the album Free to Fight, which is part of the archive’s collection and is also included in the exhibition. Free to Fight was produced by Candy Ass Records in 1995. Songs include: 151, "Real Defense;" Mizzery, "Sleepin' Wit' The Enemy;" Excuse Seventeen, "Forever Fired;" Fifth Column, "Don't."
Produced by Interference Archive.
Interference Archive has been hosting a series of Propaganda Parties: events where we distribute free materials like posters and stickers, created by contemporary artists in response to current struggles. On March 5, we hosted an event called “Building Resistance.” Radio Free Gowanus, our neighborhood pirate radio station, broadcast live throughout the afternoon. In this episode, we’re sharing some of the highlights from the event, as Mike Clemow talks to our community about what it means to build resistance.
This episode includes excerpts from interviews with: Womens March Action Club, Roxanne & Andrea, Raven Cras, Ola Ronke, Justin & Nicole, Amy Khoshbin, and Nora Almeida. To learn more about some of the projects mentioned in this episode, check out the Free Black Womens Library (thefreeblackwomanslibrary.tumblr.com/), the Center for Anti-Violence Education (caeny.org/), or Self-Care After A Fuhk Boi (www.selfcareafb.com). The full interviews can be heard at www.radiofreegowanus.org.
All the songs in this episode were included on a playlist created by Eric Kjensrud for our previous exhibition, Finally Got the News. Songs include: Allen Toussaint, "Victims of the Darkness;" Earth, Wind & Fire, "C'mon Children;" The Staple Singers, "I'll Take You There;" Bob Marley & The Wailers, "Get Up, Stand Up;" Curtis Mayfield, "Right On For the Darkness;" The Honeydrippers, "Impeach the President."
Produced by Interference Archive.
"What we're doing with Kichwa Hatari is we're activating people first, because the language won't rescue itself. We have to rely on people to rescue a language." -Charlie Uruchima
In this episode, we’re looking at language diversity in New York City. We will talk to folks whose work supports the speakers of minority languages, and discuss the importance of language as a source of cultural empowerment and as tool for community organizing.
In the first segment, we speak with Charlie Uruchima, one of the founders of Kichwa Hatari, the very first Kichwa radio program in the US. To learn more about Kichwa Hatari, visit their website: www.kichwahatari.org. The radio program airs every Friday evening from 6-8 pm EST on the station Radio El Tambo: www.radioeltambostereo.com.
In the second segment of this episode, we speak with Ross Perlin, writer, linguist and Assistant Director of the Endangered Language Alliance, a nonprofit organization that works with immigrant and refugee populations in NYC to help maintain their languages. To learn more about The Endangered Language Alliance, visit their website: www.elalliance.org
Check out our blog for more information about languages in NYC, including a language map of Queens: www.interferencearchive.org/category/blog
Songs included in this episode (in order): "Tarpuricusum Sarata" by Luzmila Carpio "Identidad" by Los Nin
Produced by Interference Archive.
"We did not go in there with the notion that we have all the answers to lead the working class, that we are the revolutionary leadership...the people who already understood the workplace, who understood the industry, who understood the union and its history were very often the rank and file workers who had been there for a long time." - Dan La Botz
In this episode, we compare labor conditions and labor organizing in 1970s America and contemporary UK. Charlie Morgan interviewed Dan La Botz and Jamie Woodcock.
Dan LaBotz was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union and is the author of many books on labor politics including Made in Indonesia: Indonesian Workers Since Suharto (South End Press, 2001), Cesar Chavez and La Causa (Pearson Longman, 2006), and What Went Wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution: A Marxist Analysis (Brill, 2016). For twenty years he was the editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis and is a co-editor of New Politics.
Jamie Woodcock completed his PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is currently a fellow at LSE. His research interests include: digital labor, technology, management, critical theory, and the sociology of work. Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres is published by Pluto Press.
Music: “Octagon Pt.2” by Polyrhythmics, courtesy of the Free Music Archive.
Produced by Interference Archive.
"There were people in the buildings who modeled themselves after homesteaders and very much wanted to become homeowners, wanted the approval of the city, wanted to act respectable--and there were other people who were doing this as a critique of private property. There were people who were fixing up their space as if it was going to be their family home for generations, and there were people who just needed a temporary place to stay and were making the best of it." - Amy Starecheski
Louise Barry interviews Amy Starecheski, author of Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City, about the process of transforming Lower East Side squats into limited-equity low-income co-ops, and the conflicts and challenges generated by this process. Amy's book is an oral history of squatting on the Lower East Side, and this episode includes excerpts from her interviews. The squatters whose voices are included in this podcast are: Famous Chrome, Maria DeDominicis, Rolando Politi, Fly, Chris Flambeaux, Nigel Clayton, David Boyle, Arrow, Geoff Dann, and Maggie Wrigley.
Music: "Dance 2000!", by Kil Kare.
Produced by Interference Archive.
More information about Amy's book, Ours to Lose, can be found here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo24550813.html
To learn more about the history of squatting on the Lower East Side, check out the list of resources on our blog: http://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-31-squatting-on-the-lower-east-side/
"People have knowledge, and they can put together stations that'll blow the doors off a government station...you get set up in the Amazon in Brazil, and you set up twenty dollars worth of equipment, you can blow a thousand miles out because there's nothing to interfere with that signal." - Rob Robinson
Charlie Morgan talks to Rob Robinson, housing activist and former co-host of "Global Movements, Urban Struggles" on WBAI.
Music: "Quasi Motion," by Kevin MacLeod, courtesy of the Free Music Archive.
Produced by Interference Archive.
"We wanted it to have a kind of handmade look...it seemed like it would be better than a curtain and a potted plant, which had been the usual for a public access program." -- Deedee Halleck
In this episode, Sabine Bernards talks to Deedee Halleck about the origins and history of Paper Tiger TV, the community media collective that became a pioneer in video art and public access television. You will also hear clips from some of Paper Tiger's early episodes.
Produced by Interference Archive.
"Bail is often described as incarceration's front door, because if you can't afford it, you're going to jail." - Peter Goldberg
In this week's episode of Audio Interference, we will speak with some of the people spearheading criminal justice reform work here in New York City. First, we will look at how bail is used as a tool to criminalize poverty. Then, we will speak with two of the organizers behind the campaign to close Rikers Island Jail. Interviewees include (in order):
Rachel Foran, Managing Director of the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund Peter Goldberg, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund Melody Lee, Director of Strategy and Campaigns at the Katal Center for Health, Equity, and Justice Myaisha Hayes, Lead Organizer for the Katal Center for Health, Equity, and Justice
Learn more at: https://brooklynbailfund.org/ http://www.closerikers.org/
Music used in this episode: "Piazza y nieve" by L.D.I. Untitled Track by Kil Kare
Produced by Interference Archive.
"I think that people are going to see reflected in this so much from their own life and from the contemporary world, more than we want there to be." - Brad Duncan. On today's show, Rob Smith speaks to Brad Duncan, one of the curators of Finally Got The News: The Printed Legacy of the U.S. Radical Left, 1970-1979, which runs from January 26 - May 14, 2017 at Interference Archive. While the exhibition is focused on the '70s, it's concerns are still relevant today. You can learn more about left history of the 1970s and beyond on Brad's blog: http://radicalarchive.tumblr.com Music includes: "Liam Rides a Pony" and "The Itis," both by Polyrhythmics from the album Octagon, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.needledrop.co/wp/artists/polyrhythmics/ Produced by Interference Archive.
"There is a kind of magic to sitting down and knowing that if someone wanted to, they could hear my voice right now." - Mike Clemow Radio Free Gowanus is a pop-up radio station broadcasting during the Gowanus Open Studios, every October. In this episode, Louise Barry speaks to the station's founder, sound artist Mike Clemow. This episode features excerpts from the RFG podcast, including a beatboxing performance by Adam Matta and a handbell performance by Brooklyn Bells. You can find out more about Radio Free Gowanus, or listen to the full podcasts, at www.radiofreegowanus.org. Produced by Interference Archive.
To mark the occasion of the launch of Season 2 of Audio Interference, we hosted a panel discussion on the use of podcasts as propaganda and community building tools. The event was held at Interference Archive on October 4, 2016. Panelists included: -Julie Golia, Director of Public History at Brooklyn Historical Society and co-host and producer of Flatbush + Main -Zaheer Ali, Oral Historian at Brooklyn Historical Society and co-host and producer of Flatbush + Main -Aaron Lakoff, curator and host of Rebel Beat -Kaitlin Prest, creative director and host of The Heart, a podcast and art project exploring love, bodies, gender and sexuality distributed by Radiotopia by PRX -Tennessee Jane Watson, a reporter, artist and educator, who produces audio documentaries, oral histories, sound installations and youth media projects -Mark Winston Griffith, Executive Director at Brooklyn Movement Center and co-host and co-producer of The Third Rail. The panel was moderated by Louise Barry, one of the creators of Audio Interference. Produced by Interference Archive.
"People are afraid and disappointed and in some cases heartbroken, and it's not enough anymore to sit at home and donate a small amount of money or buy a t-shirt. Coming out and being around your community and participating with them is necessary." - Janina Larenas In this episode, we look at two projects mobilizing people for resistance during Trump's presidency. First, Louise Barry and Vero Ordaz talk to information workers gathered for a strategy session at Interference Archive. Next, Lani Hanna talks to artist Janina Larenas about her project, Print Organize Protest. Learn more at www.printorganizeprotest.org. Produced by Interference Archive. Music: "Forget About Tomorrow" by Eyelids, courtesy of the Free Music Archive.
"The main idea is to empower people who are observers, and provide them with tools to become participants in the political realm." - Cleo Barnett, The Amplifier Foundation
In this week's episode, we take a close look at activist art produced by the Amplifier Foundation. We speak with Cleo Barnett from the Foundation about their history, current projects, as well as some of her favorite activist stickers they've recently made. Be sure to stick around for the end of this episode, where Cleo will share with us her recipe for wheat paste, used to adhere political posters to a wall or surface. Produced by Interference Archive.
"I was born and raised here, and the fact that I went to college, I'm a working professional, and I can't come back to my own community and buy a house, is a very big problem."
In this week's episode, we look at the struggle for housing here in Brooklyn. We speak with Jean Stevens, Esq., a housing attorney at Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, about affordable housing and tenant associations. Later on in the episode, we hear from neighborhood residents about what brought them to the Brooklyn Community Forum on Anti-Gentrification and Displacement held at the Brooklyn Museum. Music: "Mercurial Vision" and "Cat's Eye" by Blue Dot Sessions, "Marimba Motivation" by Dave Depper. Produced by Interference Archive.
“The songs really are some of the most direct expression of the collective voice of the movement.” - Silvia Federici For this week's episode, Charlie Morgan and Louise Barry interviewed Silvia Federici about Italian music in the 1960s and the Wages for Housework campaign. Music: "Prendiamoci La Città" by Pino Masi. "Per i morti di Reggio Emilia" by Fausto Amodei "O cancellier che tieni la penna in mano" "La ballata della Pinelli" by Pino Masi "Avete mai guardato" by Amalia Goffredo All these songs are from records held at Interference Archive. Likewise, copies of The Power of Women are also held at the archive, along with Tap Dance - the newspaper put out by the New York Wages for Housework campaign - and Lotta Continua. For images of the newspapers and records, and links to more information, visit our blog: www.interferencearchive.org/blog Produced by Interference Archive.
"It was extremely traumatic...mothers didn't send their kids to school, people didn't go to work, because of these raids." - Tania Mattos
UnLocal is a New York-based legal services organization, which works with immigrant communities to provide legal representation, education, and advocacy. UnLocal's collaboration with Mobile Print Power was included in the recent Interference Archive exhibition, Soñamos Sentirnos Libres: Under Construction. In this episode, Brooke Shuman talks to Michele Lampach, Executive Director of UnLocal, and Tania Mattos, the Outreach Coordinator. You can learn more about UnLocal by visiting their website: www.unlocal.org. For more information about UnLocal's collaboration with Mobile Print Power and Interference, check out Audio Interference 13: Mobile Print Power.
Music: "Diagonally Talking Echoes" by Dustin Wong, courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Produced by Interference Archive.
"There are fewer squatters because of state repression--because of the way the law has changed and the way the police enforce that law." - Greg Ryan This episode is about the effects of UK housing law on the London squatters movement. Louise Barry talks to Myk Zeitlin of the Advisory Service for Squatters, former squatter Greg Ryan, and a member of the Squatters Action for Secure Homes (SQUASH) campaign. Music: "Instrumental #2" by Gillicuddy, courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Produced by Interference Archive.
"It's people who are more familiar with archives who have more trouble figuring out how to negotiate this space...There's one researcher I remember, she came in with this question about Adrienne Rich, so I mistakenly assumed that she wanted to see Adrienne Rich's papers. And so I took down the box and she was just so intimidated to be in front of this collection of personal papers that had been personally donated by Adrienne Rich." - Rachel Corbman In this episode, Lani Hanna and Brooke Shuman talk to Maxine Wolfe and Rachel Corbman, of the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Based in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the Lesbian Herstory Archives is home to the world's largest collection of materials by and about lesbians and their communities. Music and spoken word from the 1977 album, Lesbian Concentrate: A Lesbianthology of Songs and Poems. Produced by Interference Archive.
"The image allows for the viewer to interpret it quickly. And I guess that's what an advertiser tries to do--that's what a propagandist tries to do." - Kevin Caplicki In this episode, Brooke Shuman talks to Kevin Caplicki, one of the founders of Interference Archive and a member of Justseeds. Founded in 1998, Justseeds is a worker-owned cooperative that produces politically-themed prints. With members working from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, Justseeds operates both as a unified collaboration of similarly minded printmakers and as a loose collection of creative individuals with unique viewpoints and working methods. Justseeds produces collective portfolios on subjects including climate justice, the Zapatista movement, migration, reproductive rights, and the US prison system. Music included: "Kufanya Mapenzi (Making Love)" Ramsey Lewis 7" Single (Columbia Records, 1972) "Anti-manifesto" Propagandhi How to Clean Everything (Fat Wreck Chords, 1993) Produced by Interference Archive. For more information, see the following links: http://justseeds.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taller_de_Gr%C3%A1fica_Popular Culture Strike http://www.culturestrike.org/ Justseeds works with frontline advocacy organizations to create their prints. Here are a handful: Critical Resistance http://criticalresistance.org/ Marcellus Shale Earth First! https://marcellusshaleearthfirst.org/
"We were subject to an FBI sting. We were placed under surveillance, and we were able to discover the surveillance and get rid of it, but then for the next nine years we were living underground." - Diana Block In this episode, Lani Hanna speaks to Diana Block about her life as an activist, organizer, and writer. Block was a founding member of San Francisco Women Against Rape and the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee. When her activism in support of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement attracted the attention of the FBI, she spent thirteen years living "underground" under a different identity. You will also hear Diana Block read from her novel, Clandestine Occupations, during the exhibition Armed By Design/El Diseño a las Armas: Posters and Publications of Cuba’s Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL). Produced by Interference Archive. Music: "Fibonaci Effect in Two Movements" by Lanark, "El Danzon de Noventa Millas" by Cuban Cowboys, and "Pivoting on Salsa Key 11," by Tracky Birthday, all courtesy of the Free Music Archive.
"We were still coming off the afterglow, in many ways, of May '68. There's no question about that." - Greg Sholette. In this episode, artist, writer, and activist Greg Sholette relates the history of the political art collective PAD/D, and how the collective used art to resist gentrification in 1980s New York. Sholette was interviewed by Louise Barry and Eric Triantafillou in March. Produced by Interference Archive. Music: "Bruises," "No One's Trophy," and "Asleep," by Christian Flanders, courtesy of the Free Music Archive.
"I think about posters as a way of starting a conversation, but I don't feel like we talk enough about how that conversation is started and where that conversation goes beyond talking." -- Kameelah Janan Rasheed On Nov 4, 2015, Interference Archive hosted a panel entitled Solidarity, Distribution, Design: The Poster Today, which explored the intersection of graphic design and socio-political engagement. Josh MacPhee of Interference Archive moderated the event and was joined by artists Dread Scott, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Avram Finkelstein for a rousing discussion that touched on topics of appropriation, respectability politics and even the Fast and Furious movie franchise. Produced by Interference Archive. Music: "Welcome Departure" by Ketsa, courtesy of the Free Music Archive.
"We're blessed with being the keepers of some very valuable stuff. It's not ours. It's intentional that this is part of the community and belongs to the community." - Claude Marks Freedom Archives is based in San Francisco and contains over 10,000 hours of audio and video tape, which chronicles both revolutionary struggles and state repressions. They also create audio and video documentaries of their own. Interference Archive reached out to Freedom Archives because of their shared commitment to archiving the histories of social movements. Lani Hanna spoke to Freedom Archives co-founder Claude Marks, and his co-worker Nathaniel Moore. Music: "Kentucky Mule" by Tate Peterson, courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Produced by Interference Archive.
"Before we ask questions, we find out more about the problems that are happening. And sometimes we even go out and ask the people around us: what is something that you don't feel comfortable with? Where do you feel disconnected?...I think that's the way that we actually find political issues to do art with." - Stephanie Roman Mobile Print Power is a multigenerational collective based out of Immigrant Movement International in Corona, Queens, who use silkscreen printmaking to engage communities and explore social and cultural situations. Mobile Print Power's history of collaborative work is the subject of Interference Archive's upcoming exhibition, Soñamos Sentirnos Libres / Under Construction, opening May 1. In this episode of Audio Interference, Charlie Morgan and Lani Hanna talk to collective members Marissa Campiz, Brandon Castillo, Jennifer Muñoz, Stephanie Roman, and Patrick Rowe. Produced by Interference Archive.
"I just remember when I was first making comics, it just felt really powerful. It's kind of like that feeling when you first start riding a bike." - Jan Descartes In this episode, Louise Barry speaks with two contributors to Interference Archive's exhibition, Our Comics, Ourselves: Jan Descartes, an artists and one of the curators of the exhibition, and zinemaker Elvis B., creator of the series Homos in Herstory and co-founder of the NYC Feminist Zine Fest. Music: "Minus Mercury" by Thorn1, courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Produced by Interference Archive.
"I really wanted people to understand what the past was. At its base level, this is what happens when women have to use a coat hanger when they need an abortion." -Leela Corman Leela Corman is an illustrator and comic book artist, based in Gainesville, Florida. Her 2012 graphic novel Unterzakhn is about twin sisters growing up in the Russian-Jewish neighborhood of the Lower East Side at the turn of the last century. Lani Hanna sat down with Corman in February to discuss the book. Produced by Interference Archive.
"We saw the hierarchical constraints of the society our parents created, and we wanted to do it differently. So we created this flattened, non-hierarchical approach to almost everything we did." In the 1960s and 1970s, California-based print collective Peoples Press produced numerous books and pamphlets on international political struggles. In this episode of Audio Interference, Lani Hanna talks with collective members Jane Norling and Marty Williams about the influence of Cuba, organizing volunteer labor, and becoming a self-taught printer. Music: "Conscience" by Ketsa and "De Cuba" by Songo 21, both courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Produced by Interference Archive.
"What I value about a political event, or what I value about a dance party--I don't know if those are very separate values at the end of the day." In this episode, Lani Hanna talks to Los Angeles-based artist and activist Steven Rodriguez about Southern California culture and identity, the whiteness of anarchism, and creating aesthetics around police brutality. Music: "Ocean" by Zebra and "Stars" by She-Wolf., both courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Produced by Interference Archive.
"Jean would take her income tax refund check and go to the track and bet on horses, and whatever money she made funded Tabloid." Tabloid was a collectively edited critical journal of mass culture and everyday life which emerged out of (and in opposition to) Stanford University in the late 1970s and 1980s. Interference Archive's Lani Hanna and Vero Ordaz spoke with Jean Franco, Mary Louise Pratt, Maria Damon, Dana Polan, and Ed Cohen about the history of the journal. Music: "Nights Tale," "Summer’s Coming" and, "After The Week I’ve Had" by Dexter Britain; "Strange Wedding 60908" by Marcel. All music courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Produced by Interference Archive.
"The importance of art in the movement was that not everyone could see themselves at the front lines...art allowed for a more inclusive community." - Tina Orlandini Tina Orlandini is a writer, human rights advocate, and creative organizer whose work identifies crossroads in community, arts and social change. In 2012, Tina, along with fellow collaborators Stephan Andreas, Pedro Lugo, Lourdes Santiago, Isabel Ferro and Marimer Berberena, co-curated smArtAction: ¡A estudiar y a luchar!, a collaborative art exhibition in recognition of two of the most resourceful and inspiring student strikes of the last decade. Through an arts-led approach, University of Puerto Rico students were able to outwit the administration while rallying popular support around the struggle for an accessible, democratic and quality university. Both strikes provide an instructive repertoire of action for present and future student resistance movements worldwide. To see a gallery of images from the exhibition, and to learn more about the UPR student movement, visit www.smartactionexhibition.com. Image: Isamar Abreu, "La UPR No Se Vende." Music: What True Self? Feels Bogus, Let's Watch Jason X by Chris Zabriskie You Must Believe in Summer by Learning Music (freemusicarchive.org/music/Learning_Music)
“It’s difficult for people to imagine an organized workplace in the arts, but we really want to make it a reality.” —Chloe Siebert Interference Archive's current exhibition, Just Cause : Bad Faith - Art Workers' Activism and Organizing in NYC and Beyond, presents a history of cultural workers’ organizing efforts and demonstrations as well as the recent investigations and concerns of artists and individuals working within the culture industry. As part of the programming for this show, which was organized by Art Handlers Alliance of New York, AHA member and exhibition organizer James Whitman interviewed Kevin McGrath, Chloe Siebert, and Neal Vandenbergh, three art handlers at the Chicago-based company Terry Dowd, Inc, where workers successfully organized and fought to unionize their workplace. Image Credit: Neal Vandenbergh. “The Equality Rule”. 2015. Vinyl, Graphite, Resin on Panel. Detail View. Courtesy of Neal Vandenbergh. Produced by Interference Archive.
“It’s not about the things, it’s about the people: who made it, who saw it, who was influenced by it.” -Lincoln Cushing Lincoln Cushing is an artist, author, and archivist from the Bay Area, who worked with Interference Archive on our recent exhibition on the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL), Armed by Design. Lani Hanna interviewed Lincoln about movement archives, large institutions vs. community-based organizations, and the importance of accurately documenting the past. A selection of OSPAAAL posters can be seen in Lincoln’s book, "Revolución!: Cuban Poster Art." You can also visit his website, docspopuli.org, for more information. Music: "Mid-Day Blues" by Tate Peterson, courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Produced by Interference Archive.
“In retrospect, we tend to create these seamless histories to tell a particular kind of story, but Greenham--it was messy. It was a messy occupation.” —Susan Jahoda Susan Jahoda is an artist, educator, and organizer whose work includes video, photography, text, performance, installation, and research-based collaborative projects. Charlie Morgan speaks with Susan about her experiences organizing the September 2014 exhibition at Interference Archive about the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, a 19-year anti-nuclear protest and encampment at a U.S. Military Base in Berkshire, England. This podcast contains music as sung by the women of Greenham Common.
“I knew there was this punk rock stuff, I didn’t know anything about it, I just went to a show, and it was like, this is really weird and I kinda like it.” —Dread Scott Dread Scott, artist and friend of Interference Archive, speaks with Vero Ordaz about his art, life, and connections to the Chicago punk scene--including memories prompted by his recent donation of posters to the archive. Image: Burning the US Constitution, documentation of a 2011 performance by Dread Scott (www.dreadscott.net). Music: "Sick of You" by the Britemores, performed live on WFMU's Three Chord Monte with Joe Belock. Produced by Interference Archive.
“Communities have given up our power to police and institutions, and we have to take it back.” —Laura Whitehorn
Laura Whitehorn is a lifelong organizer and activist whose work spans anti-war, AIDS, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and prison abolition movements. Laura was interviewed by Lani Hanna about her work, including the recent Interference Archive exhibition, Self-Determination Inside Out. Music: "Improvisation in D" by Tate Peterson, courtesy of the Free Music Archive. For more information about Laura's work, visit thejerichoproject.com or rappcampaign.com. Produced by Interference Archive.
“So much of the dominant mainstream society at that point was so odious that it felt like a desperate need to find a place that was different and alternative.” —Josh MacPhee
Greg Mihalko interviews Josh MacPhee, co-founder of Interference Archive, about his collection of hardcore punk flyers and ephemera. Music includes: "Guilty" by Spewing Cum and "While You're Waiting for the Revolution" by Action Will Be Taken, courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Produced by Interference Archive.