Radio as a Site of Cultural Resistance

'Research Impact'
FASS HDR Conference 2015
University of Technology, Sydney

Radio as a Site of Cultural Resistance

Abstract

Radiophonics is the practice of creative sound studio production originally intended for broadcast. In 'The Field of Cultural Production', Pierre Bourdieu introduces several terms for the analysis of cultural practice: habitus, agent, field, strategy, trajectory, symbolic, and cultural capital. These concepts enable a radical contextualization of the internal analysis of the formation of creative works; making it possible to relate 'the space of works' to that between the positions held by their cultural producers in their respective fields. Cultural Production is the site of struggles between the sub-fields of 'restricted production' and that of 'large–scale production' which structure the field according to a hierarchy of relative autonomy or subordination to the Field of Power (the economic and political sphere). Towards the autonomous pole, there lies a relatively freer creative space for the cultural producer. I will apply Bourdieu's approach to the field of Radiophonic Production as practised within public broadcasting in an attempt to examine the creative space available to radiophonic producers; and how in the necessary struggle within the broader cultural field between the claims of creative autonomy and mass media production radiophonic producers are able to resist the Field of Power in the so-called 'culture wars'.


Christopher Williams
Christopher is a PhD candidate in Radiophonic Art at UTS. He was a producer with ABC Audio Arts (1994-2013) and studied Performance at the University of Sydney (1994-99); Drama at UNSW (1977-80); and Directing at NIDA (1983), Australian Opera (1985-86), and AFTRS (1984-85). He was awarded the Prix Italia for Radio Drama (1998), and the ZKM Soundscape Composition Prize (2013). Christopher has exhibited radiophonic works at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin; the SEAM, Weimar; Greenaway Art Gallery; RIAus; NGV; Dianne Tanzer Gallery; and the Mildura Palimpsest. His works have been broadcast extensively on ABC Radio National and Classic FM.


Williams, C. 2015, 'Radio as a Site of Cultural Resistance', paper presented to the 'Research Impact', FASS HDR Conference, University of Technology, Sydney.