The Radio Conference – July 5

The opening took place in the Aula of Utrecht’s historic University Hall aimed explore the breadth of radio’s transnational frames. The conference was opened by Professor Frank Kessler of Utrecht’s Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON), Golo Föllmer (Halle) of the Transnational Radio Encounters project, and Janey Gordon (Bedfordshire) on behalf of the radio studies network. 

In her opening keynote, ‘Communicating the city of difference: The right to connect and disconnect,’ Myria Georgiou of the London School of Economics, explored the dense web of local and mediated connections in the ‘thrown-togetherness” (Doreen Massey) of urban London to develop a moral argument on the rights of minority groups to recognition and disconnection from mainstream.

Following this, in his keynote ‘Listening for an echo: The sound poetics of identity’ Professor Sean Street explored the links between the medium of radio and the medium of poetry in their potential for reaching out over borders and connecting.  Following a buffet dinner in the cloister of the Utrecht Cathedral, he continued on this theme with a reading of poems, including from his recently published collection Camera Obscura, and an original poem ‘Talk, Radio’ composed for the conference.