MAKU is the collaborative project of artists Maia Urstad (Bergen, Norway) and Anton Kats (Berlin, Germany), combining their shared practices and interests in communication technology, radio transmission and ways of listening.

The focus for Maia and Anton’s residency at Lighthouse (14 – 22 June) begins with thinking about how radio practices can respond to site-specific needs in useful and collaborative ways. As new forms of communication technology open up and others become obsolete, the possibilities to use these technologies for our own means and to find different ways to listen and programme also expand. But, who transmits for whom, what is being transmitted and for what purpose?

In addition to radio as a transmitter and receiver of content, Maia and Anton are interested in its sensory, listening experience. The richness of sound signals we each pick up in everyday life, often subconsciously, also give a picture of technical development and the different communities that form around it. As radio technology changes, how does listening to the technology itself – its errors, interruptions, geographical limits and communication signals – help form our memories and understanding of a place?

At Lighthouse, Maia and Anton will re-purpose equipment from around the building to create a temporary radio lab and listening space. As Lighthouse starts to think about redeveloping the physical architecture of its building, Maia and Anton will meet groups in Brighton who are using non-physical radio spaces for programming, meeting, and communicating, to think about how re-development can be a collaborative process approached from a practice of listening.

Join Anton and Maia at Lighthouse for a discussion about the different ways of working with radio.

The event is part of Lighthouse Curator in Residence Eva Rowson’s six month programme ‘Who’s doing the washing up – where’s the sink?’ exploring the role of hospitality in organisations. The project is a response to Lighthouse’s aim to create spaces to host new ideas, practices and communities and a shared understanding amongst local groups and independent organisations that these spaces are disappearing elsewhere in the city. Drawing on ideas of world-building and feminist science-fiction, modes of communication and organisational practices, the programme takes different forms including workshops and interventions as well as re-imaginings of the uses and workings of the Lighthouse building itself.

The programme title ‘Who’s doing the washing up – where’s the sink?’ is used to address questions that so often go unasked by institutions and grant-makers when imagining ’radical’ new models of organising and hosting: How are different types of work – from the artists to the cleaning – valued in these futures? Who gets to have a voice in these imaginings? And how do we actually change the infrastructures we’re working in so we don’t just reproduce the same models, narratives and values?