A river of sonic events, allowing time for slow transitions, non-regimented radio programming – just another utopia? For decades Ö1 Kunstradio has made such a format possible, 54 minutes of sonic flow with none of the unbearable chatter in between, no strictly imposed format. 54 lets time flow, 54 minutes of sonic flux. And sprinkled into the mix, roses for Ö1 Kunstradio and memories that float to the surface intermittently. (Elisabeth Schimana)

Sound material from Elisabeth Schimana's archive

Flowing time

Sometimes it feels like time is standing still, other times time is passing by at breakneck speed. The feeling of time is influenced by many factors.

In her new radio art work, Austrian composer and artistic director of IMA - Institute of Media Archaeology, Elisabeth Schimana, explores the flow of time. In "54 - a tribute to flowing time," the artist allows a flow of acoustic events to emerge. Schimana takes her time for slow transitions and starts from an almost utopian radio. A radio that is not clocked through, but is instead an acoustic flow for 54 minutes without intermediate moderations and without format constraints, as can always occur in Ö1 Kunstradio.

Elisabeth Schimana has been a companion and cooperation partner of Ö1 Kunstradio for decades. Schimana explores the space of radio in many different ways. The first collaboration took place in 1991, when ten radio pieces by Austrian composers and artists, including Schimana, made an important contribution to ARTSAT. Initiated by media artist Richard Kriesche, the ARTSAT project was the first official art project on the MIR space station, which orbited the Earth from 1986 until its controlled crash in 2001. In the course of the more than 30-year collaboration between Schimana and Ö1 Kunstradio, many pre-produced radio works were created, including 2021's "Fugen - fragmentarisch vernetzt in 13 Bildern" (Fugues - fragmentary networked in 13 images), which was based on the Idoru (Bridge) trilogy by William Gibson, or 2022's "Die Bilder einer Ausstellung" (The images of an exhibition) on the exhibition "DigiDic - Aufruf zur digitalen Selbstverteidigung" (DigiDic - Call for digital self-defense) put together by IMA. For this, the exhibited objects were transferred into an acoustic walk-through.

Schimana was involved in art radio projects worldwide with live contributions. These were not only on air on the radio, but already at the beginning of the World Wide Web they could be experienced on line and they manifested themselves on site. In 1996, for example, the artist organized the project "The Fugue" as part of the international radio and Internet project "Rivers & Bridges" with performances, installations, concerts and events at over 25 locations and with the participation of over 20 radio stations in Europe and overseas.

At the border between Austria and Slovakia, "The Fugue" by Elisabeth Schimana, where the March flows into the Danube, was performed live on a ship as well as on the radio and the Internet. Four musicians played a composition and received instructions from four conductors or artists via the Internet.

Elisabeth Schimana incorporates some of the joint radio moments with Ö1 Kunstradio into the acoustic radio river "54 - a homage to flowing time". (Text: Elisabeth Zimmermann)

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