The upcoming 80th birthday of Heidi Grundmann, founder of Kunstradio, will be celebrated as an on air – on line – on site event, a concept that she has developed together with artists. Last year, the radio program Kunstradio celebrated its 30th anniversary – since it foundation artists of all fields have been invited to use the medium radio and its extensions as a space for the creation of art and its technical realisation.
Together with her husband, artist Robert Adrian, who passed away in 2015, the critic, curator and radio journalist Heidi Grundmann has developed and realised numerous innovative network projects. Many artists from Austria and abroad consider these projects vital for their approach to media and art. Heidi Grundmann started working for the ORF, the Austrian national-public broadcasting corporation, in 1963, first as a presenter, later as an arts critic, with a stopover at the BBC’s German service in London. In 1976 she started the radio program “Kunst heute”, which reported on international fine art and included the rubric “Kunst zum hören”. In 1987 she initiated the Ö1 program “Kunstradio – Radiokunst”, that she managed until autumn 1998. Open, well-informed and always ready to take the broadcasting corporation ORF and the medium radio one step further beyond their confinements – this characterised the work of Heidi Grundmann as a radio journalist and as a producer of radio art. It was often difficult to realise the extraordinary ideas developed by artists; in most cases, Heidi Grundmann succeeded with her stamina, unconventional alliances and absolute belief in the concepts of artists, to make possible what seemed impossible. In global radio art projects such as “Horizontal Radio” (1995), borders of genres were transgressed and the idiosyncracies of new technologies, introduced by the possibilities of the internet, were explored. Relating to radio art projects of the early 1990s, the project „30/80“ takes places on various sites: at Radiocafé in Vienna, at the ESC medien kunst labor in Graz, at the artist-run-center The Western Front in Vancouver, Kanada and at Usmaradio in San Marino. And of course on air, with a 2-hour-live-broadcast of Kunstradio in the Ö1 Kunstsonntag. Participating artists are Deanne Achong, Hank Bull, Peter Courtemanche, Roberto Paci Dalo, Elisa Ferrari, Anna Friz, Paul Gründorfer, Horst Hörtner, Reni Hofmüller, Rupert Huber, Josef Klammer und Seppo Gründler, Runar Magnusson, Norbert Math, Clara Oppel, Bruno Pisek, Igor Santizo, Elisabeth Schimana , Sarah Shamash, Andrea Sodomka, Anna Steiden, Gerfried Stocker, Russell Wallace, Lise Vinberg, Stefan Voglsinger, Thomas Wagensommerer, Ludwig Zeininger, and others. Links: Robert Adrian Horizontal Radio IMAfiction Klangraum Fröbelgasse Kunst Heute The Western Front |