'C o n V e R s A T i o n A L D r I F t' with Karen Werner and Mariana Murcia

'C o n V e R s A T i o n A L D r I F t: on-air conversation, dialogue and co-thinking practices for radio resilience' was an on-air workshop led by Karen Werner, Mozarteum's Institute for Open Arts and Mariana Murcia, Seyðisfjörður Community Radio during the ICRN Radio Assembly in Oslo (co-hosted by radiOrakel).

Conversational Drift is a phrase from the US ecological artist-duo Helen and Newton Harrison who were active from the 1970s to the late 2000s. The duo developed conversational drift as a set of methods for addressing environmental and political issues. Some of their conversational methods focused on bringing people together from interdisciplinary backgrounds to discuss a specific question as they searched for solutions; other methods focused on associative ways of speaking that support "drifting into new directions." In this workshop, we tested and further developed approaches to on-air conversational drifting that serve ecological and political resilience. Together, we considered how community radio can provide a rich context for conversational drifting, given the social relationships underlying independent radio stations that, ideally, facilitate trust and risk-taking in the ways we speak, feel, think and move together even amidst many types of interference.

This experiential immersion into on-air conversational drift is part of Karen Werner's long-term curiosity about how radio stations and being on-air can elevate and deepen our ways of being together with humans and other beings. On-air, we can soften subjectivities, undo concepts, prod the familiar and experience what else is stored in us, tapping into voice, body, deep listening, imagination and mis/communication. A space of emergence and dispersal, scattering and gathering, ephemerality and the stationary, radio offers creative ways of being and learning together that can strengthen resilience.

This workshop took place live on-air, whereby participants were invited to practice and further develop conversational drifts and other forms of on-air encounter.