A workshop, action and a panel discussion on creative possibilities for using radio revealed some interesting real 'differences' when artists from Hamburg attempted to transpose their artistic site-specific radio interventions to the public spaces in Novi Sad.

Novi Sad, 18 December 2005. The radio collective Ligna (form Hamburg) organised a workshop and action in a public space to demonstrate the inventive potentialities of radio in public space. A group of 'activist' workshop participants gathered atop of an apartment block in one of Novi Sad’s residential neighbourhoods to mount a pirate radio broadcasting transmitter and to install the antenna on the roof. We take care not to be seen by the neighbours.

The radio is installed, antenna mounted. But to our dismay, there is no space on the radio dial to fit our transmission! Here we find ourselves in an ironic situation that a Hamburg radio group who has legal broadcasting space guaranteed by German law, finds that in Novi Sad there is no space for an alternative 'free' voice. The media space is droned by commercial radio stations. With difficulty, and an hour later, we find a void to fit the transmission. The result: the public intervention can be heard up to 100 metres, after which it is taken over once again by a plethora of commercial radio noises.