Field Report #3: Hear Ye, Hear Ye

May 20, 2025

Last night, over a beer (or two…) I learned that Peter lost his turtle, or it had escaped, and in order to hopefully find his turtle, he had the local village ‘radio station’ broadcast a missing turtle report . Radio station, in this context, is hardly what you imagine. There are still villages in Slovakia, at least in this region of Trenčín, where a network of cheap tannoy speakers are lashed to utility poles and used as broadcast infrastructure. Every day, even Sundays, (especially Sundays?) for about ten minutes at a specific time, messages are aired through this DIY meshwork of transmission. Peter has lost his turtle; Veronika has some potatoes for sale; Andrej wants that loud music turned off; Eva needs some help picking apples from her tree. Highly personal, highly local messages that float and drift and dissipate, resurrected for the next ten minutes and so on.

On the main, sausage-like plaza that forms the centre of Trenčín, there are dozens of light poles equipped with the ubiquitous (surveillance) camera — and a speaker. Is this a cultural nod to the village oratory system? Or is it just by chance that here in the main square (Mierové Námesti) a duplicate, yet more sophisticated, audio channel exists?

A modern form of village-style communication?

One thing I have been considering for this work is to somehow incorporate space and voice. The magic of radio is that it is meant to be experienced in situ, a site-specific action attached to that moment of its listening and its geography. I have been trying to think of ways to develop an infrastructure of spatial sound, and Peter’s lost turtle might have just been the click I needed.

So today I am going to make an appointment with the folks at City Hall and inquire into these speakers, maybe for a temporary time they can become Radio Bureau? My thought is to broadcast at a specific, and limited, time when I return in the Fall, everyday, the various stories that I’ve recorded. I like this idea of a random action, a sudden burst of audio as one goes about their day, suddenly meeting someone else’s reminisces of a bridge that was referred to me yesterday by Emma, one of the project managers, as a “communication channel.” And then it ends, spectral dust lost in time, awaiting its revival the next day.

p.s. Jana , one of the founders of FOR MAAT, a local arts group, also mentioned these speakers were tuned against a neo-Nazi rally, drowning out their stupid chants with ridiculous music, immediately suffocating their nauseous chants. Nothing better than using infrastructure as a form of civic duty.