More than ten years ago, three university students approached Palazzo delle Papesse contemporary art centre in Siena with the idea of creating a sound-only digital platform entirely devoted to contemporary and sound art, both a web radio and a growing repository of knowledge.
Such a thing didn’t exist back then and some brilliant worldwide experiences were starting to blossom into cutting-edge art institutions (WPS1 at MoMa’s PS1 and RWM at MACBA, for instance), but Palazzo delle Papesse believed in the idea and so the first museum web radio in Europe started.
Radiopapesse.org was officially founded in 2006.
A few years passed and the museum closed, but Radio Papesse did not. Instead it became an independent cultural association and from Siena it moved to Florence. (It’s been a guest at Villa Romana since 2011.) The platform has produced documentaries and interviews using radio not only as a medium, but as a language. It has created and commissioned dozens of soundworks, invited producers to use the tools of radiophonic storytelling, and given a voice to art and artists alike.
But now the time has come for a renovation, which is why Radio Papesse has launched a crowdfunding campaign to overhaul its website and archive. More than a restyling, what Carola Haupt and Ilaria Gadenz, the managers of the platform, envisage is new architecture capable of enhancing the thousands of hours of sounds stored in the archive and a new website that’s easier to access, research and share. In a nutshell, a tool for great new radio production.
Check out the Kickstarter campaign here.
