P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, a MoMA affiliate, launches WPS1 Internet radio April 19
NEW YORK—(March 19, 2004) P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center announces the launch of WPS1 (www.wps1.org), the world’s first art radio station. Sponsored by Bloomberg L.P., WPS1 goes live April 19 with an extraordinary lineup of music and talk shows broadcasting 24 hours a day.
The station's programs combine talk and music shows hosted by contemporary writers, artists and musicians with rare historic material that includes the entire audio archive of the Museum of Modern Art.
WPS1 will stream to listeners on the Internet only. Its presence on the Web will make the station's unique digital library available to an international audience at any hour, seven days a week. As such, WPS1 will become a live audio museum in cyberspace, extending the visual art, book, music, film, video and performance programs that P.S.1 and MoMA are known for in ways previously unforeseen. Here, at www.wps1.org, is the first all-art, all-the-time radio station, where expression of all kinds remains truly free.
In addition to broadcasting events originally recorded at MoMA and elsewhere, WPS1 offers a broad variety of contemporary music and original talk shows. Programs include:
- The Real Estate Show with Heather Cohane - practical advice for artists and art organizations seeking living and working space
- Conversations with Writers…Continued with Charles Ruas - interviews with authors of new books (early guests include David Shipler, Walter Abish, Fanny Howe, Edwige Danticat)
- On the Mark with Mark Fletcher – lively discussions of market-generated issues in contemporary art
- The Collectors' Forum with Althea Viafora – how to establish and maintain a private collection and advice on making it accessible to the public
- Race Stories with Maurice Berger – a unique mini-series created for WPS1 (begins in May)
- Live Nude Radio Theater with Edwin Torres - unique live mixes of contemporary poetry and music by a leading figure on the scene
- The Yay/Nay Show with Linda Yablonsky and Carey Lovelace - a critical overview of current art, film, music, theater, and books, including interviews with guest curators, artists, playwrights, directors and critics
- Writers' Choice with rotating guest hosts – one novelist invites another to read and discuss their work in unique dueling-writer format
- FAQs with Ali Subotnick – guest artists answer personal questions; look for Laurie Simmons and Aida Ruilova on the debut show
- I’ve Got Your Number with Dezia – live psychic readings and numerological information from a true clairvoyant
- Live from the Bowery Poetry Club! – weekly broadcasts of music, theater and poetry performances from the Manhattan performance center
- International Correspondents – arts news and music from Beijing, Berlin, London, Miami, Paris, Taiwan and Tokyo
- Live Events - one-time-only readings, performances and lectures recorded at the Clocktower or at remote locations in New York City
- Historic Recordings: Throughout the broadcast day, WPS1 will present a variety of archived material. MoMA's artist talks include the voices of such luminaries as Edward Steichen (1955), Marcel Duchamp (1962), Spalding Gray (1990), Jasper Johns (1963), W.H Auden (1953), Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Robert Rauschenberg (1961). WPS1 will also present hundreds of artist talks from the Skowhegan School; readings sponsored by the Poetry Society of America; highlights
- from Linda Yablonsky's NightLight Readings series, (1991-1999); and an extraordinary series of readings and interviews from WBAI/FM (1975 – 1977) with such writers as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Tennessee Williams, Joseph Heller, E.L. Doctorow and Jerzy Kozinski.
- WPS1's music shows, organized by Elliott Sharp, feature contemporary composers, musicians, and singers such as John Cale, Steve Piccolo, Tracie Morris, Radio Phenomena;, Dave Grubb, Kim Cascone, William Basinski, Stephen Vitiello, and Yuka Honda and Sean Lennon;. Music/talk shows include “La Caldera,” by Laura Andel, broadcasting in Spanish and English; “Shocking Blue” with Delphine Blue; “Love Crazy” with Nora York; and Sharp's own show, “Musica Mathematica.”
- Lokke Highstein, P.S.1’s Warm Up co-curator, has rounded up dailynightly programs of live DJs focusing on current trends in Drum and Bass, Techno, Hip-Hop, and Trance and includes new mixes by: DJ Q-Zen, Mystic Bill, Forest Green, John Howard, DJ Spun, Jazzy Nice, and Harvey.hosted by Lokke Highstein
WPS1 is located in a studio expressly built for broadcast over the Internet. Designed by architect William Massie in Tribeca’s Clocktower Building, it is made of hybrid plastic and laser-cut steel. The vibrant orange studio provides a curvilinear, earlike space for recording and broadcasting programs. The Clocktower has been the site of many historic exhibitions including the inaugural show in 1972 which included work by Joel Shapiro, Richard Tuttle, and James Bishop.
WPS1 was conceived by P.S.1 Founder and Director, Alanna Heiss, who has dreamed of creating an art radio station for more than twenty years. She and Glenn Lowry, Director of the Museum of Modern Art, actually discussed the vision of the radio station during the merger discussions between MoMA and P.S.1 in 2000.
Visitors to www.wps1.org may select from a live audio stream or can listen to the archives of past shows. The online stream will be a 28k MP3, making it easy for all Internet users to participate.
WPS1’s staff includes Alanna Heiss (P.S.1’s founding director), Executive Producer; Linda Yablonsky, Program Director; Brett Littman, Managing Director; Jeannie Hopper, Station Manager; Elliott Sharp and Lokke Highstein, Producers; and Darrell McNeill, Sound Engineer.
WPS1 is sponsored by Bloomberg L.P. Bloomberg L.P., founded in 1981 by Michael R. Bloomberg, is a leading financial information services, news, and media company, serving customers around the world. Headquartered in New York, the company employs 8,000 people globally in 110 offices around the world. Bloomberg leverages its data and news resources through related media products, including television and radio programming, Web sites, books, and publications, to meet the financial information needs of professionals and consumers globally.
For more information, please contact Rachael Dorsey in the P.S.1 Press Office:
T: (718) 784-2084 ext. *827/ F: (718) 482-9454/ e-mail: press@ps1.org.
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