ANDY WEBSTER
SIGNALS FROM ANOTHER WORLD
SIGNALS FROM ANOTHER WORLD (2018)
By 1972, the geodesic dome's utopian promise was crumbling. What had symbolised progressive futures—from American counter-culture to Soviet cosmic socialism—was being emptied. The 60s dream of breaking free from time was collapsing into something else: time as commodity, utopian forms as retro styles for today's eco-retreats.
This project began with a fiction set in that collapse: Latvian dissidents in the late 1970s, living nomadically in pods, using CB radio to broadcast survival methods, music, stories, and poetry. Truck drivers between Riga and Roja occasionally picked up their transmissions, calling them 'Signals from Another World.' These weren't idealists choosing alternative lifestyles but people responding to Soviet occupation and the broader end of visionary futures.
Working with Darren Ray and Latvian collaborators, we built a replica pod at the edge of a wooded area in Roja and made daily broadcasts. Latvian actor Elita Klavina read forgotten poet Tim Okser. Artists from Germany, Latvia, the UK and the USA contributed materials. The broadcasts mixed Western counterculture (Bowie, Ramones, Fugazi, Ginsberg) with discussions about what happens when counter-cultural forms get co-opted, when the future gets cancelled. We devised this fiction to explore those questions without appropriating real dissident voices. The project acknowledged what separated us from the imagined dissidents: we arrived with institutional support, we could leave; what was a necessity for them became an aesthetic exploration for us. The fictional container allowed conversations across different cultural contexts about resistance, collapse, and who gets to imagine alternatives when alternatives themselves have been commodified.
Collaborators: Darren Ray, Derek Tyman, curator Maris Grosbahs, and architect Oskars Redbergs. Developed at Roja ArtLab, Latvia, 2018. The work was developed at the Roja ArtLab, Latvia [2018]. For further information, visit the rojaartslab.
Playing tracks by Mick Ronson & David Bowie, The Damned, Joey Ramone, Velimir Khlebnikov, Azfar Hussain, Alain Badiou and more.
Playing tracks by Saul Williams, Allen Ginsberg Reads, Fugazi, Engine Ears Documentary, John Zorn and more.
To listen to all 18 broadcasts, follow here.