Event
RTM.FM
19 Oct 2018 – 18 Nov 2018
Regular hours
- Friday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Saturday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Sunday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Wednesday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Thursday
- 10:00 – 18:00
Cost of entry
Free
Address
- 30 Poplar Place
- Thamesmead
- London
England - SE28 8BA
- United Kingdom
Developed in collaboration with artist Sam Skinner, Radio Thamesmead (RTM) is a new radio station, broadcasting live from TACO! on www.rtm.fm
About
Sam Skinner, whose work explores the relationships between technology, media and community, was invited by TACO! to develop a project to re-establish community radio in Thamesmead. Sam has turned the gallery at TACO! into RTM (www.rtm.fm), an installation with live radio station broadcasting an eclectic mix of music, spoken word, local history interviews and more. RTM’s programmes are made and presented by local people and groups including Mary Martins, Hasina Zuberi, Willaim Ofuso- Apea, SP Studios, Carolyn Long, Panto Dame Mama G, Michael Ohajuru, Tatiana Ellis and Alex Tuckwood.As part of the broadcast schedule, contemporary artists have been invited by TACO! and Sam to make contributions with contributions from Francis Scott, Larry Achiampong, Tom Richards, Kate Carr, Anne Hardy, Lisa Selby, Mark Vernon, and David Gauthier and more.
Named after the area’s original community station which launched in 1978, RTM both reflects on and revives the long cultural history of radio in Thamesmead, re-establishing a long-term online broadcasting platform made for and by local people. As well as setting up a live broadcast studio the project also established free skills training for local people and a steering group to manage the station as a community cultural resource.
Sam’s project works across a range of media, interior design and exhibition typologies to investigate the practice of the ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ or synthesis of the arts. Functional elements; from microphones to chairs, speakers to sound insulation, neon, posters and promotional material, combine in the gallery to create a dynamic aesthetic and functional social space. Archival material consisting of audio, documents, photos and ephemera from the history of community radio in Thamesmead, pirate radio, and that of radio more widely are presented as part of the installation, including lithographs from 1877 depicting early experiments in electromagnetism by Augusto Righi and screen printed posters from the 1960’s and 70’s promoting the free Radio movement.
Sam is interested in how an art practice that operates between use and ornament may manifest via the focal point of a locally embedded, socio-technical institution, such as a radio station. The installation supports a nonlinear engagement with both the new and the old station, the living histories and futures of radio, and the unique ways different communities engage with the medium, and wider media ecologies.