Re: Search is the culmination of Sam Sebren’s 2013 Wave Farm Residency, which he spent researching the history of transmission arts, radio, noise, performance, and the politics of radio. Through an immersion into the Wave Farm Study Center library collection of books and recordings, Sebren created a quasi, “non” documentary, open-narrative, audio collage using a collection of quotes, his own field recordings and music, and excerpts from over 40 transmission artists, musicians, and various broadcast media archives. The title of the project, Re: Search refers both to Sebren’s process and to artists’ endless quest for a poetic “truth,” as well as the ongoing search for information in the vast material created using the medium of radio during the 20th and 21st centuries.
Sam Sebren
Sam Sebren is a multidisciplinary artist who began his career in the East Village New York arts scene in the 1980s. A prolific maker, Sebren’s visual works take form in installation, collage, painting, photography, video, and public works. His sound-based works have ties to noise and no-genre music (Menlo Park Recordings). More recently Sebren has delved deeply into the medium of radio. His radio works for Wave Farm/WGXC have been broadcast nationally and internationally on Pacifica stations and on the Radia Network. Sebren also uses the medium of radio to activate dialogue around ecological and social justice issues impacting New York’s upper Hudson Valley. His program “The Nothing Is Real Radio Hour” embraces FM broadcast as a creative medium and is part of Transmission Arts and Experimental Sounds Saturday programming on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM. Previous radio projects include “nothingisrealradio” with neighborhood public radio (npr) at the ’08 Whitney Biennial, and “Dharma Bums” co-hosted with Christina Malisoff on WRPI, Troy, NY.
Sebren’s work has been exhibited in galleries and universities widely, as well as in film festivals, unsanctioned public interventions and non-profit spaces. Recent exhibition venues include Scope Art Fair, NYC; Collar City Film Festival, Troy/Brooklyn; Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ; The University at Buffalo Art Gallery; John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY; The College of Saint Elizabeth, Morristown, NJ; X-Initiative, NYC; The Center for Photography, Woodstock (CPW), CUNY Graduate Center, NYC; The College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY; TSL, Hudson, NY; Bard College; Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY; Siena College, Loudonville, NY; in the empty, former Ulster County Jail as part of The Kingston Sculpture Biennial; and in the traveling exhibition (and accompanying book) “Paper Politics” (PM Press).
Wave Farm
Wave Farm is a non-profit arts organization that celebrates creative and community use of media and the airwaves. Our programs provide access to transmission technologies and support artists and organizations that engage with media as an art form. Wave Farm’s major activities include:
Transmission Arts: programs that support artists who engage the transmission spectrum, on the airwaves and through public events. The Wave Farm Artist Residency Program is an international visiting artist program. The Transmission Arts Archive presents a living genealogy of artists’ experiments with broadcast media and the airwaves. Wave FarmRadio Art is a continuous online radio feed.
WGXC (90.7-FM): a creative community radio station based in New York’s Greene and Columbia counties. Hands-on access and participation activate WGXC as a public platform for information, experimentation, and engagement.
Media Arts Grants: a Regrant Partnership with NYSCA, Electronic Media and Film, The Media Arts Assistance Fund supports electronic media and film organizations, as well as individual artists, in all regions of New York State.
