2 minute read
Az Irratia, the Azkuna Zentroa - Alhóndiga Bilbao radio station, is born
The Azkuna Zentroa programme expands towards new formats to disseminate and maximise contemporary culture. With the launching of Az Irratia, the Azkuna Zentroa - Alhóndiga Bilbao radio station, the Centre commits itself to the spoken word as a means of conveying artistic thought and reflection. Included in the 2019-2023 Programme Project, the proposal continues the consonni radio with AZ prototype, undertaken by consonni under the Resident Collective Programme between 2018 and 2020. By way of an epilogue and major player, the cultural producer is working on the birth of this new project. Az Irratia is an experimental community radio different from the more traditional concept of radio and centred on the current podcasting format. It has been designed as a contemporary means of cultural experimentation, driving sound creation and reflection revolving around contemporary artistic practices. Its sections and topics not only dialogue with the Centre programme lines, but also with its autonomy as a creation project and a channel to recover environmental sounds and voices along with other cultural moments and artistic practices.
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Physically set in a central space of the Atrium, this sound window opens outwards to generate a new meeting space with an artistic context that both works and resides in the Centre. It expands far beyond the Centre and city walls to become an archive of contents, a sound archive. The project kicks off experimenting with an hour long monthly magazine format with separate sections for professionals and broadcast both via streaming and in the Atrium. We invite Centre friends to create stories, compose new sound tracks and generate moments of listening. On the one hand, these sound pills will inherently be collective creation exercises adding value to the radio-performance tradition or the radio magazine and, on the other, they will be inviting other voices to become interested in experimenting with podcasting for the first time. Az Irratia is a local radio with an international flavour whose narratives and compositions can be followed naturally from anywhere in the world, thereby creating a community of proximity without geographical borders. This project approaches how Walter Benjamin conceived the idea of radio, i.e. a voice as a guest invited into one’s home, the radio station (inseparable, as per the philosopher, from its educational task), a more daring technique than theatre as it mobilises «knowledge in the public direction and what is public in the direction of knowledge».
