Released as part of Sonic Acts Academy 2020 and now available for digital download, CONDITIONS : 1218 – 0719 is the first release by MÆKUR, the collaborative project of Maiа Urstad, Eva Rowson and Anton Kats. During the Academy, MÆKUR transformed the space at De Brakke Grond into a radio studio, playfully engaging with FM and AM broadcasting formats.

In their speculative performance they share excerpts from the release, which includes recordings from the MÆKUR archive gathered from Blind Veterans UK Amateur Radio Society, Bergen Kringkaster (Bergen Broadcasting Association) and the Deutsche Welle radio archive, and improvisations recorded during residencies at Bergen Kunsthall (Bergen, Norway) and Lighthouse (Brighton, UK) in the past two years.

The collective synthesizes artistic, sonic, radiophonic and curatorial practices to research and respond to communication technologies, amateur radio networks, archival practices and ways of listening. As new technological forms open up and others become obsolete, MÆKUR are interested in how methods of self-organising, listening and transmitting as well as the sounds of the technology itself — its errors, interruptions and signals — also evolve. At the core of the MÆKUR collaboration is theongoing archive, to gather and emphasise multiple soundings of technical development and the different communities that form around it.

The release is available now as a digital download at the Sonic Acts and MÆKUR Bandcamp pages.

For more insight into the MÆKUR collaboration and the artists involved, listen to recent podcasts with Anton Kats (co-produced by Sonic Acts) and Maia Urstad on Ràdio Web MACBA, and ​‘Send and Receive’: a podcast with Maia Urstad, Eva Rowson and Anton Kats on Lighthouse, in which they discuss their different ways of working with radio as tools for communication, programming and listening.

CONDITIONS : 1218 – 0719 is a collaborative release co-produced by Bergen Kunsthall (Norway), Lighthouse (United Kingdom), Sonic Acts and Paradiso (Netherlands).

Image CONDITIONS : 1218-0719 by MÆKUR