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Abstract

Radio Healer is an art project facilitated through patient and respectful cross-cultural partnerships consisting of Native American, Chicano, Ilocano, European, and Euro-American backgrounds. These partnerships form a group of artists who mentor each other in order to create ritual performances that demonstrate multi-cultural collaboration. Radio Healer contributes to the health and vitality of our communities by providing a sense of cultural space or place for social gathering and dialogues. The goal of Radio Healer is to express critical thought regarding the cultural implications of the colonial project and its' electronic technology. To achieve this, project artists take a tactical media approach by applying Chicano rasquache traditions as a framework for the innovation of culturally responsive electronic technology. This innovation emerges through the design and construction of ceremonial electronic implements that are constructed by hacking, circuit-bending, appropriation, recycling, and adaptive reuse. These tools are created for the ceremonial performance of music, story, and dance. The artists of Radio Healer contribute this sacred medicine as members of our respective cultures for the humanization of each other and all peoples.

Left Photo: Artist Lisa Tolentino holds a Radio Healer rasquache musical instrument. Right Photo: Radio Healer rasquache musical instrument constructed with a poster mailing tube and chiptune circuit design.

Radio Healer is directed by Cristóbal Martínez (Chicano) and Randy Kemp (Choctaw-Euchee-Creek) as an electro-acoustic indigenous media exercise of cultural and rhetorical sovereignty. This is for the recognition of the sovereign rights of indigenous peoples who are subjugated under colonial oppression.