Kyiv On Air

Radio is the fastest medium. When you are on the air, you can render any story with your mouth, lips, tongue, teeth, palate, throat, vocal chords, breath or silence while it happens. Radio has no boundaries, as you can catch it even with a cable, you just have to connect it somehow. It’s not so long ago that the USSR citizens had the experience of listening to ‘voices’ in all possible legal and illegal ways: they were obstructed by the Iron Curtain in getting free information. The world was catching radio and finally caught it. Radio is also a medium with the longest memory. At the moment when these words were being written, the Radio Culture was broadcasting the archived record of Vasyl Stus reading his poems. Then, one of the Ukrainian radio orchestra lineups sounded – the greetings from the past, as this music was played and recorded half a century ago.

This year, the program Kyiv On Air provides an opportunity to discover the world of sounds with one’s own eyes.

A rather rare cluster of events will take place at the special site called On Аir Studio. The stage where the outdoor studio of the Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine will be located will hold both the scheduled program discussions and live broadcasts in the daily linear programs. All of them will be available to listen to in the territory of the Book Arsenal Festival in Kyiv, as well as on the airwaves worldwide, that is, without borders. All the events are thought out in such a way that they can both be visited, listened to on the radio and watched on television or online in social media.

At first glance, it lacks entertainment… but, in fact, it’s an access for all visitors of the Book Arsenal Festival to the previously invisible performance: the radio and television studio work. The painstaking studio work will take place right in full view of the public. All these things usually remain behind the scenes, but not this time, as on this day, radio and TV presenters will also perform as moderators of the program events. The highlight of the curatorial program is the opportunity to hear live radio play Ward No. 7, which won the third place in the UA/UK Radio Drama Competition; Audiobooks (Toreadors from Vasyukivka by Vsevolod Nestayko and the stories by Hryhir Tyutyunnyk) performed by famous readers Vasyl Chornoshkura and Oleh Komarov; the special episode Poetry on Radio Culture, which will combine the poetic voices of both the dead and living authors.

In 1924, in Kharkiv, the Ukrainian radio was broadcasted for the first time. The words “Hello, hello, hello, Kharkiv on Air” opened the broadcasting service. The first program on the Ukrainian radio broadcasted the live concert. So, the Ukrainian radio has been on the air for 95 years. My curatorial program Kyiv On Air is an opportunity to celebrate this nearly 100th anniversary.