Chapter 4: Radio as Collage Art

“A Light in the Darkness”

As a WFHB supporter, I would like to unambiguously situate this event and the use of archives in it as one of reflective nostalgia. I think there is a genuine case to be made for this. In the temporal specificities of archival selections like “Chick of the 90s” and the Beavis and Butt-Head-inspired fund drive sketch are acknowledgments that things have changed and will continue to change. WFHB has a past that does not need to be dragged forward into the future, but which we can nonetheless remember, if sometimes with a cringe. By placing the archival listening section next to some of our newest and most quickly growing types of content—the video recorded Firehouse Sessions and our Youth Radio and news and public affairs programs—the WFHB staff juxtaposed past next to present and future, as well, not conflating them or suggesting a need to return to the former, but offering a spectrum of WFHB times and practices.

There is no way to be sure that everyone would agree. It is easy to imagine some attendees, whether longtime WFHB participants or outsiders to the organizations, leaving with the feeling that the event was looking inward and longing to recreate an imagined golden era of U.S. freeform radio. How do we mitigate this risk? Boym writes that “the prepackaged ‘usable past’ may be of no use to us if we want to co-create our future” (ibid.). The archival objects and performances scattered throughout this event were given to attendees and could not possibly have included contributions from every past or present participant to have ever shaped the airwaves. Still, they did not stand alone and were not meant to represent a singular past. Further, Volan gave the crowd his thoughts on how to co-create the future. Staff brought literature to the event with information on how to get involved with WFHB as a volunteer.

These inroads to co-creation and connection contribute to the case for WFHB Past and Present as a mobilization of reflective nostalgia. Moving beyond Boym’s framework, though, the event also generated moments of relief for a station whose participants awaited updates about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with dread, and the coming together of so many people in a live face-to-face context allowed for immediate connection among individuals in the listening and broadcasting community WFHB serves. Many voices, literal and figurative, came from past and present to contemplate an uncertain future together. Archival engagements were a critical part of this collage.