Transmission Artist
ANNA FRIZ
Anna Friz is a sound and radio artist, and media studies scholar. She has been actively involved in Canadian independent radio since 1993, and was program director at CiTR (Vancouver) from 1998-2000. Since 1998 Friz has predominantly created self-reflexive radio art/works for broadcast, installation or performance, where radio is the source, subject, and medium of the work. She has performed and exhibited widely across Canada and the U.S.A., as well as Mexico City and Merida, Mexico; Belfast, Northern Ireland; Berlin, Hamburg, and Halle, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; Rotterdam, Netherlands; Riga, Latvia; Tallinn, Estonia; Linz and Vienna, Austria; Bratislava, Slovakia; and Lisbon, Portugal. Friz has lectured and performed at numerous universities and art institutes in Canada, as well as CCRMA at Stanford University, the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, Estonia, and UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico. Her radio art/works have been heard on the airwaves of more than 15 countries. Her research has been published in anthologies such as "Islands of Resistance: Pirate Radio in Canada" (2009), "Re-inventing Radio: Aspects of Radio as Art" (2008), "In the Place of Sound: Architecture|Music|Acoustics" (2007), and in journals like Acoustic Space, Cinema Journal, Musicworks, PAJ:Journal of Performance Art, Public, and Wi: Journal of Mobile Media.
Friz employs many approaches to experimental radio and radio art: from creating live in-studio or in-situ broadcasts, to composing radio art pieces for rebroadcast internationally, to undertaking nomadic, unlicensed low-power (or micro-watt) radio interventions, to participating in large-scale network media exchanges; from classic 'radio theatre' staged performances, to installations and performances using multi-channel radio transmitter and receiver arrays. Her artistic practice also draws directly on disciplines such as soundscape recording and composition, audio art, and experimental music; with a consistent use of voice, text, and theatrical elements in both installation and performance works. Radio functions as a crossroads for her diverse interests that enables a unique interdisciplinarity in her media and sonic practices; reflecting upon persistent questions about human communication, phenomenologies of wirelessness (particularly the mediated experience of distance and time), and relationships of sociality and technology. Friz is intent on re-framing transmission as an open, indeterminate, heterogeneous process; an embodied machinic practice within the dimensions of the human, that invokes new territories in the imagination, or new experiences of our contemporary surroundings. Her work is prone to tangents, interference, affective noise, and reverie.
LINKS
Works
- Radio Territories (Artist Multiple)
- Radio Action III (AD034) (Dispatch Series Release) free103point9 Transmission Artists, 2008
- Vacant City Radio (Artist Multiple) Anna Friz, 2005
Exhibitions & Events
- The Radio Conference 2009: A Transnational Forum, July 27, 2009 – July 30, 2009
- Anna Friz_Our Domestic Radiation, Jan. 22, 2009: 2 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
- Anna Friz: You Are Far From Us at Spectropia, Oct. 16, 2008 – Oct. 26, 2008
- RadiaLx, Sept. 20, 2008 – Sept. 28, 2008
- Radio Action III: Online Radio Program, June 18, 2008 – Aug. 30, 2008 (Curated by free103point9 in collaboration with Barbara Held)
- Online Performance of "When Radios Sleep" for RWM MACBA Opening, June 18, 2008: 1:30 p.m. – 1:50 p.m.
- Deep Wireless 2008, May 1, 2008 – June 1, 2008
- Friz + Leonardson, Wright + Drury, NYSAE, May 31, 2007: 7 p.m. – 11 p.m.
- Anna Friz + Eric Leonardson, May 23, 2007: 8 p.m. – 11 p.m.
- Trans-local Performance, May 10, 2007: 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
- free103point9 performances for Frequencies, Feb. 4, 2007: 2 a.m. – 6 p.m.
- You Are Far From Us: solo for 4 transmitters and 50+ receivers, Oct. 3, 2006
- Radia: The Demonstration, Sept. 28, 2006: 2 p.m.
- Radio Festival, Aug. 5, 2006: 2 p.m. – 10 p.m.
- free103point9 @ Observatori Festival, May 5, 2006 – May 7, 2006
- ScopeOnAir, March 10, 2006 – March 13, 2006
- AIRtime Live: Anna Friz, Feb. 16, 2006: 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
- Tune(Out)))side, July 4, 2005: 3 p.m. – 10 p.m. (Curated by free103point9)
- Deep Wireless 2005: A Celebration of Radio Art, May 27, 2005 – May 29, 2005
- NRRF Radio Road Show, Dec. 7, 2004
- Radio 4x4: Great Small Works, Nov. 25, 2003
- Great Small Works Fourth Radio Cabaret, Nov. 25, 2003: 8 p.m. – 11 p.m. (Curated by Tianna Kennedy)
ARCHIVE
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Audio
- Anna Friz_Our Domestic Radiation, Jan. 22, 2009. Show number 199 for the Radia network, from free103point9 transmission artist Anna Friz. (audio/mpeg)
- "When Radios Sleep" for RWM MACBA Opening, June 18, 2008. 061808 online radio performance from Tianna Kennedy, Anna Friz, and Twisty Cat, from Brooklyn. with special guests Ed Bear and Lea Bertucci. (audio/mpeg)
- Anna Friz - Third Coast Festival FeatureCast, Jan. 17, 2008. Sounds, stories, and radio art by Anna Friz. Plus an interview from this Chicago Public Radio podcast. (audio/mpeg)
- Andrew Drury, Anna Friz, Eric Leonardson, Jack Wright at the Tank, May 31, 2007. The night of performances concluded with all four artists improvising together. (audio/mpeg)
- Anna Friz + Eric Leonardson, May 31, 2007. at the Tank in New York City (audio/mpeg)
- The Demonstration: For Radia Network: Anna Friz, Sept. 28, 2006. Originally designed for pirate radio broadcast as part of a youth theatre/media and democracy project in Toronto, Canada, spring 2006. I created a series of pieces to serve as mediascapes surrounding actors in a physical theatre, reflecting on themes suggested by participating high school students (ages 16-18) such as power, commercialized culture and media saturation, justice, and freedom. The pieces were heard from radios suspended in the theatre, broadcast on 4 watts FM. (audio/mpeg)
- PS 122 Fourth Radio Cabaret (audio/mpeg)
Image
- Vacant City Radio CD cover, Jan. 1, 2005. Anna Friz (image/jpeg)