{"id":816993,"date":"2026-10-28T23:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T23:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816993\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T23:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T23:34:12","slug":"artist-ian-james-launches-pirate-radio-station-in-california-desert-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816993\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Ian James launches pirate radio station in California desert – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

In May 2020, the Los Angeles-based artist Ian James<\/a> received a package from Wuhan, China. It was a radio transmitter he had ordered months prior from the e-commerce site Alibaba. The seller\u2014concerned about the scarcity of toilet paper and N95 masks in the US due to Covid-19\u2014padded the crate not with bubble wrap and packing chips, but with masks and toilet rolls. After a long delay at customs, James tells The Art Newspaper, the package arrived \u201con a wing and a prayer\u201d.<\/p>\n

James had ordered the transmitter to use for a New Age pirate radio station in the desert called KHLZ<\/a>. Beginning this past Saturday (24 October), every day at sunset the secret radio station starts its programming. KHLZ will broadcast overnight between 5pm and 9am\u2014after the FCC monitors turn in for the evening. \u201cIt will be this ghost radio station broadcasting as though someone is asleep at the switch,\u201d James says.<\/p>\n

In his art practice, James often examines the adoption of spiritual technologies by corporate enterprises and capitalist value systems. His new radio station serves as something of a foil to corporate economies and federal regulatory systems. It operates off the grid as an unlicensed, itinerant broadcast featuring music and compilations from a diverse array of spiritually intoned, New Age musicians from the 1970s to the present. This programming is \u201cgood for people\u2019s mental and emotional well-being\u201d, James says.<\/p>\n

The impetus for this project began nearly 15 years ago. Starting in 2012, James ran a New Age programme on KCHUNG<\/a>\u2014an artist-led radio station in Los Angeles. But in 2019, he decided to establish his own station, including it in his solo exhibition in Santa Monica.<\/p>\n

Titled The Harmony of the Noosphere<\/a>, the show drew on the writings of the New Age writer and artist Jose Arg\u00fcelles, who popularised the concept of the Noosphere: the third sphere surrounding the Earth that serves as a site of human consciousness and mental activity, growing in complexity as planetary consciousness evolves. \u201cUtopic in its goals, the Noosphere\u2019s construction is aided by technological innovations, yet hampered and disrupted by the capitalist machinations that produce and pervert these possibilities,\u201d reads the exhibition statement.<\/p>\n

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Ian James\u2019s KHLZ Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n

This precisely is the complex relationship that lies at the centre of much of James\u2019s work. The exhibition featured wall works with stock photo-type advertisements for spiritual technologies and a live-streamed meditation session. And there were three pyramid-shaped sculptures housing a transmitter and two speakers, enabling James to broadcast New Age mixes.<\/p>\n

While the 2020 exhibition served as the first iteration of James\u2019s radio station, he had always planned to transfer it to a mobile facility and broadcast in perpetuity. Now, six years later, James has officially launched his station in a retrofitted caravan-turned-broadcasting studio near Joshua Tree.<\/p>\n

The caravan came into the artist\u2019s possession at a fortuitous and unexpected time. It was given to his partner, the painter Patricia Fernandez, just after the onset of the pandemic. James started renovating it as the federal government began increasing unemployment benefits and sending stimulus checks. \u201cI was getting $1,000 a week or something that I was putting into this radio-station project,\u201d James recalls. \u201cIt was stupid and crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

After discovering rat droppings and mould in the caravan\u2019s walls, James completely gutted the interior and decided to cover every surface in a faux-Calacatta marble laminate, which similarly ornaments the three pyramid sculptures inside. Inspired by a glacial cave he had visited in Iceland, James wanted to create a cool (but not cold) space, one that through material specificity\u2014in this case, the simulacra of the oldest continually quarried marble in Italy that has been used in spiritual and governmental sites since antiquity\u2014communicated across generations without need for explanation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was interested in the fact that this marble had a simulacrum made by the Formica corporation,\u201d says James, adding that he liked the idea of using \u201cthis repeating pattern that probably came from some small section of marble that is in another building somewhere\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Ian James\u2019s KHLZ archive includes typewritten and Xeroxed newsletters about extraterrestrial contact and interdimensional communication Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n

In addition to serving as a broadcasting studio, the caravan houses a growing archive of materials pertaining to the vast culture of New Age practices. It includes every issue of a Michigan-based newsletter called Pyramid Power. It also features a collection of typewritten and Xeroxed newsletters about extraterrestrial contact and interdimensional communication called White Star, given to James by the Ufologist and New Age musician JD Emmanuel\u2014a featured guest on the artist\u2019s old show on KCHUNG.<\/p>\n

Alongside cassettes that James sourced from eBay\u2014previously sold at massage parlours, spas and mediation centres\u2014he includes the veritable all-stars of New Age music. These are people like Kat Epple (a close friend and collaborator of Robert Rauschenberg<\/a>) and Iasos, a jazz student at Stanford University in the late 1960s who claims he was contacted by two interdimensional beings. <\/p>\n

Iasos believed the music the aliens shared with him would \u201chelp humanity ascend to a higher plane of being\u201d, James says. Only with the growing availability of synthesisers in the early 1970s was Iasos able to re-create the sounds that he had heard. He called it Paradise Music.<\/p>\n

James had previously interviewed both Epple and Iasos at KCHUNG. \u201cIasos was always thinking about how the music can raise people’s vibrations,\u201d James says, \u201cand help humanity become more peaceful and empathetic towards each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

KHLZ is meant to be \u201ca benevolent thing that people can listen to and participate in\u201d, James says. He imagines that, given its location near Joshua Tree\u2014though it will also stream online and occasionally travel for pop-up events\u2014the station will serve as a meditative soundtrack for people while they do yoga, cook dinner, or \u201ceat mushrooms and run around. As you’ve probably seen, there\u2019s a lot of ways to be \u2018woo-woo\u2019, so the radio station is open to those possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In May 2020, the Los Angeles-based artist Ian James received a package from Wuhan, China. It was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[32066,776,96,229233,99,128,10552,40216,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-816993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-aliens","tag-california","tag-entertainment","tag-joshua-tree","tag-los-angeles","tag-music","tag-sculpture","tag-sound-art","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}