deja vudu radio project
overview
the project is a radio-art installation that examines vibration as an epistemology through sonic archive and collage. drawing from sound archives across the atlantic and mediterranean regions—including gaza, the caribbean, latin america, and africa—the project explores the concept of “formless formation.” by enacting a visual and sonic poetics of relation, it creates an ensemble of resonance across space and time, employing non-linear principles. this project delves into the sonic possibilities that disrupt conventional ideas of transmission, time, and vibration.
about the device
deja vudu radio project's work centers on a modified am/fm alarm clock radio device. deja vudu is presented as a recurring radio show, broadcast daily at the same time. the transmission operates as a pirate radio channel, transmitting live recordings from the past collaged with present-day recordings and imagined conversations. for the achievement of this work, it will be necessary some level of programming and sound engineering, as well as studio access and audio production.
for example, the radio show might juxtapose an interview originally broadcast by radio haiti-inter during the haitian revolution with contemporary responses by ricardo aleixo, an activist and poet from minas gerais, brazil. aleixo’s contributions blend his personal biography with a fictional character shaped by the performance’s context. the show features several distinct sections, a talk show, news section with collaged broadcasts that blend newscasts across time and space, deliberately ignoring geopolitical and historical constraints, musical performance with live experimental jams by guest musicians using synthesizers and radio wave modifiers and the radio novel, a serialized science fiction story, accompanied by sound sculptures, presented in chapters.
the daily transmissions culminate after 30 episodes. once the series concludes, the radio becomes an archive within itself, housing an "impossible future" that exists in an imaginary timescape. from that point onward, it becomes impossible to synchronize with the radio clock’s time.
the objective of the performance is also creating a ceremonial gathering to solely listen to a radio in communality.
conceptual rationale
the human hearing range is conventionally defined as between 20 and 20,000 hz, but this simplification ignores the layers of frequencies our bodies perceive. beyond our ears, we hear through our skin, flesh, and bones, experiencing multiple harmonics both above and below this range. this layered perception challenges the traditional boundaries between sound art and radio art.
by rethinking sound as a form of radiation, the project acknowledges that auditory and visual signals are only partial components of sound-radiation. the aim is not to focus solely on what is audible or visible but to reveal the hidden horizons that conventional perception obscures. through radio art, the project creates a polymorphous perception of time, allowing participants to “hear” the vibrations of imagined radical futures with their entire bodies.
artistic intent
the deja vudu radio project is rooted in a practice of continuous investigation and vibrational contamination. it celebrates the capacity of ensemble—a meeting of impossibilities—to exist without a fixed program or agenda. this curated collage of temporal and spatial impossibilities challenges the conventional understanding of documentation and reality.
ultimately, the project seeks to investigate vibration and resonance as epistemological tools for exploring the union of oscillating social forms. it is an “anti-foundational acknowledgment of founding noise,” locating paradoxical encounters within discrepant thought, politics, social life, and sound—all interwoven, all harmoniously incongruous. through these investigations, deja vudu presents a sonic experiment in radical imagination and collective resonance.