Programme
LIGNA
Germany
RADIO MAMUTICA
8 - 14 September 2006
Travno, New Zagreb 
The logic of capitalism is that of the commodity: where ever it arrives, everything becomes commodified - even the electromagnetic waves between 87,5 to 108 MHz - the FM band - are turned into a market place. In Croatia the state, the church and companies are competing on this local market. They all use the radio for the distribution of goods: no matter, if they broadcast information, relief for the soul, the latest pop songs and even small amounts of counter information: they all expect the listeners to receive passively and as single individuals. They are organised as private production: there is no public access to the studios except for the call in lines, that receive calls of the listeners, that are as standardized as the programs, the stations broadcast in return.
"Radio Mamutica" will open the airwaves for public production. 
A temporary radio station will interfere with the everyday life of Mamutica by inviting the inhabitants to contribute. It is a radio not to represent certain interests but to perform a social process. The listener is activated. Exploring the everyday-life of the people living in Mamutica, the radio frequency becomes a public place for the articulation and production of desire. Thus "Radio Mamutica" tackles the question who is occupying the public space - and how other models than that of private property could look like.
Depending on the possibilites and constraints of such an enterprise beyond the market, "Radio Mamutica" will develop a series of programs. Some will be rather intervening. "Radio Mamutica" will organise the situation of reception between the skyscrapers, producing public situations with the radio to irritate the normality of the everyday-life and to stir up discussions. Others will try to establish the radio itself as a public place for exchange of desires concerning the living in Mamutica. Some will be just music programs with music other stations ignore but people in Mamutica would like to listen at. However, "Radio Mamutica" will be an open process. It is quite unclear what will be the result. It depends on the situations, the desire of the people - and of the repression that is to be expected. Since LIGNA does not know Croatian, we could only make proposals for programs and situations that could be realised. We do not want to control the process but rather to enable a process at all - and for sure try to find strategies to avoid representation and other commodified structures.
The free radio group LIGNA consists of the media theorists and radio artists Ole Frahm, Michael Hüners and Torsten Michelsen, working in the broadcast station Freies Sender Kombinat, a free, non-commercial, local radio station in Hamburg. Broadcast of LIGNAS Music Box started in 1995; they transformed different spaces by seting up sound installations. Since 1999 LIGNA examins the meaning of dispersion in and of radio, relating to forgotten or isolated utilizations of this medium to develop new practices. LIGNA has put on performative radio plays, in which the broadcast on site influences the process. Since 2002 LIGNA is developing concepts of how radio can intervene in public and often controlled spaces, so that their public reappears as uncontrollable situation.