Dear friends and colleagues,
I hope this case of study of a free radio taking advantage of the use of Minitel is inspiring. Felix Guattari was deeply involved in the project.
Podcast: RADIOACTIVITY #2. Radio Tomate. With François Pain
Link: http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/radio-tomate-francois-pain/capsula
Radio Tomate has gone down in history as one of the main players in the French free radio scene of the late sixties, but François Pain is a direct link between it and the situation in northern Italy during the same period. Initiatives such as Radio Alice in Bologna were more than just the initial spark for the French movement: the precarious technological infrastructures (homemade transmitters) were also a result of the experience gained in Italy in a few short but intense years of underground work. The interesting thing about this comparison is the enormous difference between the legal frameworks of the two countries. In the late seventies, Italy had freed the airwaves, opening the doors to dozens of small independent broadcasters. Meanwhile, in France, the first broadcasts by Pain and his collaborators were totally illegal. Before François Mitterand came to power, and the subsequent legalisation of private radios (a gesture that also gave a green light to all kinds of non-commercial projects), Radio Tomate and similar collectives operated completely underground. In this sense, they effectively continued the work of pirate radios such as Radio Luxembourg and Europe no. 1, which had successfully dodged government prohibition since the mid-fifties, and had become popular beyond expectation.
Fruit of the (often conflictive) cooperation of a group of left-wing militants, thinkers and artists, Radio Tomate was launched in 1981 with the aim of encouraging a new notion of debate and an alternative form of communication that revolved around the local area and the streets; as Félix Guattari, who was an active member of the core team, put it: 'collective-individual reappropriation and an interactive use of machines of information, communication, intelligence, art and culture.' Just like Radio Alice, the first incarnation of Radio Tomate did not last long. Two years after it began, due to police persecution and the chaos inherent to its decentralised structure, the project was abruptly suspended. And, as in the Italian case, the station's later iterations (until the start of Fréquence Paris Plurielle in 1992) gradually moved away from the original idea, from the mix of poetry and politics that made the first free radio a radically different media experience.
Timeline
00:44 The birth of free radio in France
03:27 Organisation and dynamics of Radio Tomate
04:30 Guattari as a pivotal figure
06:26 Underground resistance
10:04 The Minitel experience
12:54 Conflict after the legalisation of free radio
15:58 The influence of Radio Alice
Note: This podcast is only available in French
RADIOACTIVITY #1 (feat. the Italian media activist Franco Berardi) was dedicated to Radio Alice http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/radio-alice-franco-berardi/capsula
Enjoy!
[http://macba.cat/uploads/tagline_post.jpg]<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFXHTBTVIRo>
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