Radio Fara Frecventa: Texts

>> From Derek Holzer's report on the Hybrid-Radio Workshop:

From Sept 30 to Oct 3, I worked at the Tranzit House with students from the local university and Joanne Richardson to create Radio Fara Frecventa [Radio without Frequncy]: an experiment in microFM and net.streaming ... The end goal of this workshop was that these students would be equipped with the necessary knowledge to start and operate their own microFM radio station, and to use interet streaming to share content between different nodes of a grassroots broadcasting network (between, for example, independent radios in Cluj and Bucharest, or with Tilos Radio in Budapest).

Almost immediately on being asked what they would like to broadcast, the students began interviewing each other and their friends about the inadequacies of the Romanian educational system ... Out of these interviews, a series of edited clips were produced for broadcast ... The last day was spent mounting the antenna on the roof of the neighbor's house. This action was very heartwarming, and reminded me of a traditional "barn-raising": out of nowhere, suddenly there were at least 20 hands ready to help. Even the local 5 year old hooligans, who had been around to harrass me for colas and play with my laptop, lent a hand ...

Read entire report:
[ http://www.n5m4.org/journal4580.html?118+275+1906 ]

>> From the press statement issued by RadioFF after it was under investigation:

In present day Romania ... laws which permit transmissions at 1 watt don't exist anymore. It is illegal and punishable by imprisonment to emit without a license at any power, even if your signal only covers a few streets. And it is impossible to have a legal, independent, non-commercial station - the law proposed by Attila Gasparik from CNA, which would have granted licenses to independent organizations and NGOs was categorically rejected. So only government stations and commercial stations can get licenses; community radio is forbidden here.

On November 1 we put announcements everywhere in public places and in local and national media about the launch of "Radio Fara Frecventa" (Radio Without a Frequency) at 106.1 FM ... The "launch" of Frequency Free Radio, as the name suggests, was a media hoax - in fact, we exist only on the internet and have no frequency. The transmission on November 1 was "internal" and audible only in the place where our happening took place - those who searched for us on 106.1 didn't find anything. During our "launch" we wanted everyone who was present to imagine what it would be like to live in a liberated zone where it is possible to say whatever we want about things that matter to us without being threatened by imprisonment for the desire to communicate freely.

Read entire press statement:
[ http://www.n5m4.org/journal6b84.html?118+275+2657 ]

>> From the essay by Joanne Richardson, "Net.radio in Eastern Europe"

Alternative media often takes refuge in unofficial, unlegislated or uncolonized spaces – from samizdat publications, zines and pamphlets that don’t need to be registered, to broadcasting without a license (“piracy”), and most recently, the internet. Despite its bad rap, throughout history piracy has been a reaction against monopolies established by autocratic powers ... Piracy was widespread after the collapse of the communist media, often forcing new governments to change the law. At the beginning of the 1990s there were more than 3000 pirate radio and television stations across countries of the former Soviet Union; today around 1000 are broadcasting legally. In the Czech Republic, Radio Stalin, which broadcast from a toppled Stalin statue in Prague, became so popular that the government didn’t dare to shut it down, preferring to write new laws that permitted hundreds of stations to emerge. In Hungary, Tilos Radio (translated as “forbidden radio”) started broadcasting in 1991 to raise awareness about the absence of legislation for community radio. Tilos broadcast for many years outside the law, constantly changing locations to evade the police. With its monthly parties and open microphone policy for different groups and minorities, Tilos became a pillar of the Budapest cultural scene and was instrumental in liberating the airwaves. In 1995 a media bill was passed with provisions for low-power community radio stations.

The first pirate station in Romania was Radio Camuflaj in 1990, but pirate radio emerged as a significant phenomenon only after 1995. DJ Tony from Radio Alert recalls that the pirate radios in Bucharest "used to be a kind of family, meeting listeners every couple of weeks," and sometimes having broadcasting parties on a single frequency, interacting with each other as if they were in the same studio. After the crackdown on piracy in 2000, with steep fines and threats of imprisonment, most of the pirates disappeared. In 2001, Attila Gasparik of the National Audiovisual Council proposed a new law that would grant licenses to non-profit community groups and NGOs, but it was rejected by parliament. In response to the failed media reform, in 2002 Radio Fara Frecventa (Radio Without A Frequency) in Cluj started broadcasting simultaneously on FM using a low powered transmitter and streaming on the internet. The first press statement of RadioFF announced: "we wanted everyone present … to imagine what it would be like to live in a liberated zone where it is possible to say whatever we want about things that matter to us without being threatened by imprisonment for the desire to communicate freely." During its live events RadioFF tried to promote public awareness of how net.radio could be used to bypass legislative control.

Read entire essay:
[ http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors3/richardsontext2.html ]