Los Angeles Artist Runs an Unlicensed Radio Station From a Desert Caravan
Los Angeles artist Ian James has started a pirate radio station, broadcasting from a converted caravan near Joshua Tree, California. Pirate radio means broadcasting without a government licence. The station, called KHLZ, went on air on Saturday 24 October.
KHLZ starts its programming every day at sunset and runs overnight, from 5pm to 9am, according to The Art Newspaper, which reported the launch. The station is unlicensed and off-grid, meaning it is not tied to the usual electricity network. It is also itinerant, a word for something that moves from place to place. The studio is a caravan that has been fitted out for broadcasting.
The music is New Age, a style of spiritually themed, often calm, instrumental and vocal music. KHLZ plays songs and compilations by New Age musicians working from the 1970s to the present day.
The station has a longer history than its desert setting suggests. Starting in 2012, James ran a New Age programme on KCHUNG, an artist-led radio station in Los Angeles. In 2019 he decided to set up a station of his own. He included the idea in a solo exhibition in Santa Monica, a coastal city near Los Angeles, titled The Harmony of the Noosphere.
Getting the equipment took some effort. In May 2020, James received a radio transmitter, the device that sends out a broadcast signal. He had ordered it from Alibaba, the Chinese online marketplace, and it arrived in a shipment from Wuhan, a city in central China.
The project sits at the point where art and broadcasting meet. James built a working station, not just a display of one, and put it on the air each evening. For listeners, the result is simple: after sunset, a desert caravan is playing New Age music until nine the next morning.
