Ian James Launches KHLZ Pirate Radio From Desert Caravan

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Los Angeles-based artist Ian James has launched KHLZ, a New Age pirate radio station, broadcasting from a retrofitted caravan near Joshua Tree. The station began operating daily at sunset starting October 24, transmitting overnight from 5pm to 9am, a schedule chosen to avoid FCC monitoring hours. James first conceived the project nearly 15 years ago.

The central piece of equipment, a radio transmitter, arrived in May 2020 from Wuhan, China, ordered via Alibaba. According to James, the seller, concerned about pandemic-related shortages, packed the crate with N95 masks and toilet rolls instead of standard protective materials. The package experienced significant customs delays before its arrival, James told The Art Newspaper, describing it as arriving“on a wing and a prayer.”

James's artistic practice often explores how corporate entities and capitalist systems adopt spiritual technologies. KHLZ operates as an unlicensed, off-grid broadcast, serving as a counterpoint to corporate economies and federal regulation. Its programming features a diverse selection of spiritually infused New Age music from the 1970s to the present. James states that this content is“good for people's mental and emotional well-being.”

The concept for KHLZ evolved from James's New Age program on KCHUNG, an artist-led radio station in Los Angeles, which he ran starting in 2012. By 2019, he decided to create his own station, initially presenting it as part of his solo exhibition, The Harmony of the Noosphere, in Santa Monica.

That exhibition drew inspiration from New Age writer and artist Jose Argüelles and his concept of the Noosphere, described as Earth's third sphere for human consciousness. The exhibition statement noted,“Utopic in its goals, the Noosphere's construction is aided by technological innovations, yet hampered and disrupted by the capitalist machinations that produce and pervert these possibilities.” This intricate relationship is a recurring theme in James's work, which included wall pieces resembling stock photo advertisements for spiritual technologies, a live-streamed meditation, and three pyramid-shaped sculptures housing a transmitter and two speakers for broadcasting New Age mixes.

While the 2020 exhibition marked the station's first iteration, James always intended to make it mobile and broadcast indefinitely. Six years later, he has launched it from a caravan that was given to his partner, painter Patricia Fernandez, at the start of the pandemic. James renovated it using unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, recalling,“I was getting $1,000 a week or something that I was putting into this radio-station project. It was stupid and crazy.”

After finding rat droppings and mold, James gutted the caravan and covered its interior surfaces with a faux-Calacatta marble laminate, mirroring the material used on his pyramid sculptures. Inspired by an Icelandic glacial cave, he aimed to create a cool, communicative space. He explained his interest in using the Formica corporation's simulacrum of ancient Italian marble, noting,“this repeating pattern that probably came from some small section of marble that is in another building somewhere.”

Beyond its function as a broadcasting studio, the caravan houses a growing archive of New Age materials. This includes every issue of a Michigan-based newsletter called Pyramid Power, and a collection of typewritten and Xeroxed newsletters titled White Star, focusing on extraterrestrial contact and interdimensional communication. These were gifted to James by Ufologist and New Age musician JD Emmanuel, a former guest on James's KCHUNG show.

The station's music collection features cassettes sourced from eBay, originally sold at massage parlors, spas, and meditation centers, alongside New Age artists like Kat Epple, a collaborator of Robert Rauschenberg, and Iasos. Iasos, a Stanford jazz student in the late 1960s, claimed contact with interdimensional beings who shared music he believed would“help humanity ascend to a higher plane of being.” With the advent of synthesizers in the early 1970s, Iasos recreated these sounds, calling them Paradise Music.

James had previously interviewed both Epple and Iasos on KCHUNG. He noted that Iasos“was always thinking about how the music can raise people's vibrations, and help humanity become more peaceful and empathetic towards each other.” James envisions KHLZ as“a benevolent thing that people can listen to and participate in,” serving as a meditative soundtrack for listeners near Joshua Tree, or via its online stream and occasional pop-up events. He believes the station is“open to those possibilities” for listeners to engage in various“woo-woo” activities, such as yoga, cooking, or consuming mushrooms.

Source: The Art Newspaper

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