About S2N

Signals2Noise is a major gathering of independent community radios held in Berlin. S2N focuses on the exchange of experiences and collective artistic processes with Eastern, Central and Northern European community radios.

Community radios have a long and complex history as a medium and an important, if largely underestimated, position within the wider cultural and media landscape. S2N aims to highlight the many aesthetic, musical and social processes that emerge and unfold around alternative radios.

S2N is the result of a collaboration between Cashmere Radio, an experimental radio station based in Berlin-Wedding, and Easterndaze, a platform for the exploration and dissemination of Eastern European cultural and music scenes. S2N builds upon two editions of Easterndaze On Air, a remote exchange between community radios, which took place in 2021 and 2022. A number of community radios from the Easterndaze network are taking part in S2N, together with radios from the nordic-baltic Independent Community Radio Network (ICRN), as well as several radios participating for the first time, making a total of 14 radio stations.

Together, members of the community radios will undertook an 8-month collective co-production and co-curation process. This culminated in an 18-hour public event and broadcast on the 4th October 2024, in Berlin-Wedding where the productions developed over the previous months were premiered alongside other contributions curated and invited specifically for this program. These included works by researchers, artists, radio makers, musicians and collectives whose practices revolve around the diverse constellation of media practices and experimental radio.

All pictures © Black Rhino Radio

Community radio embodies a long and complex history of cultural media and its contemporary re-inventions. Both well-established and dynamic, it juxtaposes experimental and quotidian artistic expressions with forms of political and social activism; voicing marginalized or repressed parts of society together with broader zeitgeists. Community radio serves many public functions, yet its potential has not been recognised outside of a limiting comparison with the dominant media landscape. This project aims to highlight the many aesthetic and musical experiences that emerge and flourish in the alternative radio environments, not to mention its socially-engaged nature of community-building, volunteering and collaboration.

Each community radio brings their own unique strategy through which this collaboration manifests. The aim of the project is thus to present alternative cultural production methods employed by Eastern, Northern and Central European community radio stations through strengthening their translocal collaborations and expertise exchange.

This project is intentionally based in Berlin, and actively takes up two motifs embedded in the historical and geopolitical threads that the city of Berlin embodies: the increase of resilience of autonomous culture media institutions against local and regional challenges; and the mobilization of complex and diverse interdisciplinary skillsets that come into the making of the contemporary community radio. With over 50 participants from at least 14 different countries, the project aims to highlight the historical and current importance of Berlin as a hub of continental cultural production and distribution, facing towards Eastern Europe, at the same time serving as a gateway (physical and symbolic) to Western Europe, and yet firmly anchored in its own unique tradition as a fertile environment for countercultures and radical and innovative approaches within social, aesthetic and political spheres.