Making Radio More Elastic. SAVVY Funk

Zusammenfassung

SAVVY Funk was a radio program from documenta 14 in collaboration with Deutschlandfunk Kultur. This text is a written record of a fictional radio broadcast, which in fact has never been broadcast, but which is compiled of conversations, radio shows and experiences that actually took place in the course of SAVVY Funk, redefining and reflecting on the medium and its arts. It presents radio as a collective practice, which has the ability to generate a plurality of voices and networks. SAVVY Funk draws on the initial qualities of radio as a time-based medium, a medium of serendipity, ephemerality and liveness, which allows listeners to be part of events in the very moment they might not even have looked for, and therefore allows one to escape from the filter bubbles of internet media. Being part of such a prestigious art exhibition like documenta, the program introduces radio and sound art to the contemporary art world, while at the same time questioning – as performance arts already do – art as an economic system. “I proposed this radio program, because I wanted my grandmother to listen to documenta, I want my grandmother to be part of it. Very simple,” says Bonaventure Ndikung, co-curator of the program, pointing at the potential of radio as a mass media to enlarge the exhibition space.