Radio Picknick

A picnic is like a radio station: both activate spaces that are simultaneously public and private, and both affect space without changing it. What remains is an experience that lingers on.

A picnic invokes the right of public access and makes the space a commons of conversation. The history of the picnic dates back to revolutionary actions in which citizens occupied aristocratic gardens. There are other narratives, too, of course; proponents of manorial rights and property ownership see the origins of the picnic in hunting expeditions. For radio, too, there are several alternate histories. One could be that pirate radio forced media freedom; another would say that this freedom is called marketing. Ralf Homann's critical and poetic performance on the controversial history of both the picnic and the radio are linked with images from paintings and films including Edouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (1863) and Krsto Papić's Nek se čuje i naš glas (1971).