We have apparently lost our ability to have fun!
Radio, TV, newspapers, and the like are all so terribly tedious and boring;
mainstream media mainly serving nothing but a magnanimous mediocracy;
being full of sound and fury, signifying nothing but a deafening cacophony.
Paradoxically, mass communication have separated and detained us all incommunicado.
Ergo the need for a new radio station.
What purpose a radio should serve?
It must serve to:
- create a “theater of the mind”;
- bring intelligent, sensitive, responsible, and polite people together;
- broadcast for the “deaf”;
- bring ordinary people around a democratic, free and independent medium;
- help us all inhale “fresh air” in every sense of the word.
We have to act with dignity.
We promise not to offer any solutions whatsoever.
(All we can do is perhaps offer a couple of temporary remedies for the reigning “uncuriosity syndrome” around the globe.)
We do not want to give you anything; we want to take as much as possible from you.
For, we are in this project together –-
A project which represents the values we all share.
June 1995
Aims and Purposes of Açık Radyo
Açık Radyo, 94.9 Fm, is a free and independent radio station, the fruit of a collective effort by about one hundred individuals from all walks of life.
It is democratic as to its structure, working methods, and broadcasts.
It strives to promote the protection of fundamental human rights and basic freedoms universally.
It attempts to serve as a platform and a "clearing house" for all rights organizations, NGOs, and grass roots organizations – both on the national and global levels.
It lays great emphasis on cultural matters and tries to broadcast widely on multi-cultural, cross-cultural, multi-ethnic issues.
It aims to capture “the image behind the image”, i.e, to capture life as it is.
It aims to fill the airwaves with a sound that is a unique combination of music, news and personality.
It is open to all the sounds, colors and vibrations of the universe.
Açık Radyo is here and now!
Manifesto of Open Site (Açık Site)
Wherefrom (do we come), whereto (do we go)? Quo vadis? Where are we headed to? And on our way, where do we stand? What is our stance?
This is a time, it would seem, to stop and think things over.
For all of us together and for everyone of us on his own.
Never before, perhaps, have we had such an urgent need to think things over, as we do now.
Everything seems to bear signs of this need.
We need to think in order to prove that the only species in the universe to be gifted with an intelligence rendering it capable of founding civilisations is not foolish enough to annihilate the planet, life on it and, it goes without saying, its very self.
Think, in order to prove that our species is not a biological “error”.
Think, in order to prove that “in this possibly terminal phase of existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival” (Chomsky)
It is at such a time that we have given birth to the Open Site.
A throbbing, thriving place.
The Open Site strives to cast a clear eye upon the dark face of this world where the forces of “good” and “evil” are at war with one another.
You might also see it as a pocket-size flashlight fuelled by tiny batteries.
It is a frail ray of light shed upon the abysmal darkness of chaos while decision makers with no idea about the future are headed towards a twilight zone.
This frail ray of light roams, casting its beam on almost everything that is of interest to living beings.
The “Serial of the Universe”, the never ending history of our wars, the terrifying hum of the earthquake, our warming air and water, our globalisation, our greeds, our angers, our rights, our economies and our crises, our road maps showing the way to European civilisation, our terror maps reaching into the depths of black holes, our genome maps, our diseases, our miraculous remedies, as well as the birds and the bees, the one-for-the-roads, the poor, the women, the children, the child abusers, the splendour and the misery of the media, the music of the spheres, and, last but not least:
“All the beauty of human civilization – our art, our music, our literature – lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles.” (Roy)
Our Open Site is a small flashlight, but one whose handle stretches to fit as many hands as want to hold it or hold on to it.
How many hands, how much light? This we shall see, all together.
December 2001
