Radio’s Redemption

When I first started working with the Radio I didn’t know what the final product of the process would lead me to. I never willfully destroyed an object before if not out of rage.

The Radio was not even acquired by me, but with me. Last year my boyfriend and I were doing our routine strolling of the Saturday thrift market and he was looking for a radio for his dad, whose disease makes him gradually forget things (he still remembers some of David bowie’s lyrics to this day though). A radio playing music to listen to together, to help the brain to be stimulated and decelerate the process of letting memories slip. An act of love.

As we passed a stall selling old electronics there she was: the radio. My boyfriend immediately ran up to it and asked the sketchy guy running the stand if the radio worked, to which he replied with a “….yYyyess…yes. 5 euros.” His answer only confirmed the doubts I had from the instance I saw her; I could bet that radio did not actually work. My naive bf, without listening to my concerns bought it on a whim. The radio was his and we headed home. Him, all exalted for the new gift he bought for his dad, me still filled with the uncanny feeling we had just been robbed.

The day later I called him and asked about how the radio thing was going. The radio did not work, of course. Not the cd player, nor the cassette player, and the antenna was not capable of connecting to any channel at all. Totally broken. I, as the way I’m built, would have thrown it away immediately, my boyfriend, as the pathological hoarder he is, kept it in a corner under the sink in the bathroom, allowing her to collect even more dust in the meantime.

One year passed, our relationship broke too, and the boyfriend I once had turned into a great friend of mine.

When I was asked for an object to destroy I’ll admit the radio was not the first thing that came to mind, I was looking for something I had a positive emotional connection to, but after a series of vicissitudes I realized: the radio. That cursed object that deceived and humiliated my ex, that needlessly deluded his dad in a way, and to which I never felt a slight glimpse of friendliness at all. Obtaining it was easy, I just had to ask him and collected it on the same day.

As I started extracting more and more nails, digging into the dusty shabby cables, circuits, and connectors, disconnecting them one after the other, my brain started making connections as well; are nails and cables that connect objects like these to make them work and stand together that much different from the invisible ties that form human relationships? I’ll have to admit that working so intimately with the radio created in me some kind of emotional bound to her. She was rejected and forgotten, abused if you want, left in a corner collecting dust far before she ended in me and my friend’s hands. I started empathizing with her and decided it needed a redemption somehow. A redemption for her and all the people coming in touch with her and having to face the consequences of her dysfunctions, when, after all, it was not even her fault.

After a talk with my colleagues about how our works were going I realized that turning Radio’s parts in something precious, — even wearable — would have been perfect for the redemption I was going for. I kept the connectors, nails, cables, (and even some pieces I still have no idea what their function was for) to turn them into jewelry, giving them a new life through them.

Jewelry are in many cultures used to symbolize the tie in a relationship and that was exactly was I wanted to go for as this object itself is tied to many people as well (many of whom I don’t even know of). I did in some way repair the radio, just not the literal way. The dirt and dust and old glue were removed and wouldn’t be discarded as well: that’s what made her so broken the most and that’s what is needed the most for an adjustment like this one.

Radio’s Redemption project is trying to redime an abused object turning it into something valuable just as humans themselves are able to do the same.