Radio Free Gowanus (RFG)
“Broadcasting from the bottom of the canal…”
A pop-up pirate FM radio station dedicated to artists, activists, and meeting your neighbors.
Radio Free Gowanus began in 2014 as a way to better participate in Gowanus Open Studios. I was tired of welcoming visitors into my studio only to offer them headphones and awkwardly stare at them while they listened to my sound work in the loud, bustling atmosphere of the Arts Gowanus studio crawl. This meant that visitors were isolated, unable to talk to the friends they came with or even to me, an artist in whose work they might be interested.
So, I decided to turn my studio into a radio station and welcome visitors to speak with me on the air.
In 2015 artists were being evicted from a studio building on 9th Street and 2nd Avenue, casting a pall on the open studio event. Some organizing was being done to protest the evictions and I dedicated the entire weekend’s broadcast to covering the issue.
From 2016 to 2019 RFG collaborated with the Interference Archive (interferencearchive.org) to do pop-up radio broadcasts during their “Propaganda Party” events. Each of these events centered around an exhibition of materials from the archive and allowed visitors to create and share materials for upcoming activist events like protests and rallies.
During these events I would broadcast live and talk to visitors on air about their own artistic and activist activities and anything else that they want to share.
These examples are from the RFG broadcast at an Interference Archive event called “Building Resistance.”
During the initial lockdown in Brooklyn, NY in summer of 2020, Radio Free Gowanus broadcast a “daily socially distanced dance party” for a few hours each evening via the internet. These broadcasts were facilitated by a group of organizers in Prospect Heights who wanted to joyfully interact with the community on their block while in quarantine. They would dance on their fire escapes in their backyards at a safe distance.
You can find more information on the older podcast page (radiofreegowanus.org), which includes show notes for each of the episodes.
Over the years, I began to think about RFG as more of an archive than a podcast. This archive will grow as I continue to have more broadcasts and process more recorded conversations.
— Yours in Solidarity, RFG.
