Pirate Broadcast

2008-2012

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In 1951, Manuel Diaz-Leal, my grandfather, began transmission from his newly erected radio tower in San Antonio, Texas. KUKA was only the second Mexican owned radio station offering all Spanish programming in the country1. It created a new space for a community bound by their language, a space that was simultaneously invisible and ubiquitous. In part, he created a new world, one superimposed upon the other.

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In 2008, I began using home made UHF transmitters to beam videos of live performances to seemingly abandoned television sets wired into public light poles in Brooklyn, NY.

 

Like my grandfather’s, my transmissions are invisible, yet have form. The signals radiate from their source outward with an electronic force. What would be a sphere pours around people, objects, trees, and buildings – penetrating some, stopped completely by others. WE shape it. Our bodies become ghosts who pierce walls; enter the street, nearby homes, and the spaces outside. They offer a new communion ready to be picked up by any willing receiver.