TUNABLECITIES
Tunablecities mobile radio project remapping cities through the voices of their inhabitants
Using an interactive radio platform (TC Radio), online mapping tools, an online digital platform, and creative workshops, the project Tunablecities investigates the forms and meaning of the border in our society. Tunablecities analyses, in particular, the relationship between inhabitants WITH the city1 and IN the city, and reflects on the role of communication as a tool to overcome cultural and physical boundaries. The project takes place on several layers: as a real-time event, videos, as live radio talk, as a sound installation, as an exhibition, as a digital interactive platform, like a book. All results and collected materials will convolute on an interactive web platform called Tunablecities.org. This is made of an interactive map, an archive, a podcast/journal.
Tunablecities offers people space, the technical tools, and the chance to tell their stories and to become an active part in a wider public debate.
The TC Radio is an open-end series of radio talks created by people and recorded in different cities with the digital TC Radio Recorder, during the TC Creative Lounge. This is a creative workshop space coordinated by the artist where various art actions and creative happenings take place. The recorded radio talks will be uploaded on the interactive Tunablecites.org web map and archive.
The TC web Map shows an interactive world map with satellites pinpointing the cities where the TC Creative Lounge has been, and the radio talks have been recorded. By clicking on the satellite everyone can listen to the radio program and get access to videos, sounds, texts, and images of What is a Border? and the Ideal Places Tour Map. The participants in the TC Creative Lounge have the option to be just visitors but they can also choose to become active authors of Tunablecities. The radio program is not the only way they can express their own ideas. Everyone can write for the Tunablecities Journal, or participate in What is a Border? Or even become a tour guide in the Ideal Places Tour or contribute to the Ideal Places Map. Participants are invited to choose an Ideal Place in their city and to describe it with words (video self-recording), drawings, or a letter (text on paper).
Each Ideal Place will be saved in the Tunablecities interactive online map under the city category, and linked to a navigation tool. Participants can also choose to lead the other guests to their Ideal Place offering a live guided tour, during which they will be telling memories and personal anecdotes about the place, explaining about its history, explain why they choose it. Tunablecities is a globally conceived and constantly widening project by the Venetian artist based in Potsdam, Germany, Valentina Ferrarese, being realized in different media and geographical, cultural, and political contexts. The idea has started from the artist´s self-experience of migration throughout Europe at the beginning of the European Union empowerment, and it bases on the observation of profound structural changes in and out of the European territory, especially of the meaning of border as a constantly oscillating concept between a political and geographical, and a cultural and historical „barrier”.
*The idea of a free speech mobile radio has been initially inspired by the “Ghost Bus”, a bus used during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina to transport journalists to and through forbidden areas.
TC Radio: Communication, collaboration, connection
TC Radio is made for people and by people. The project uses the art space as a neutral space, a space for free speech, and shared experience. Tunablecites operates through collaboration, connection, and interaction between creative partners active in different places and spaces. Tunablecities collaborations will take place thanks to existing contacts, by invitation and by application, as the project sets up in collaborative spaces, museums, galleries, artists’ studios. The project travels from Potsdam to other cities, especially to the EU and non-EU countries. Among the first cities to be explored, there are Berlin, Potsdam, Venice, Rotterdam, Sofia, Istanbul. The project can take place also in minor cities or towns.