On Air - On Site: back to the archive
On Air - On Site
On Air – On Site is a yearly art radio festival in The Hague. It always starts on a Friday night and lasts 48 hours, spanning a weekend in the spring. As the name suggests, On Air – On Site happens both combines being on air with a live format. It consists of a fixed media program of international sound artists, live radio on Friday and Saturday night broadcast from Radio Tonka on Den Haag FM, and two afternoons of live performances streamed from the Institute of Sonology and West Den Haag. While the 2024 edition of On Air – On Site had a focus on Cuba, the festival is partnering with institutions in Chile for the 2025 edition. The Museo del Sonido in Santiago de Chile will stream the festival in a listening lounge and Tsonami in Valparaíso is participating with a fixed media program as well as with a live intervention. About the organizers: Sound artist and radio maker Margherita Brillada conceived this initiative recognizing the sociological dimension of radio as a public space for artistic involvement and community connection. In 2023, she initiated the festival as a practice-based project aligned with her artistic research in community radio and web radio. Leonie Roessler works with field recordings and art radio. Her work has been increasingly focused on both collaborative composition processes and the theme of marginalization. Margherita and Leonie have been working together for three years now, and are also running BUG Radio, a Social-Public Space for Artistic Practices.On Air – On Site is a yearly art radio festival in The Hague. It always starts on a Friday night and lasts 48 hours, spanning a weekend in the spring. As the name suggests, On Air – On Site happens both combines being on air with a live format. It consists of a fixed media program of international sound artists, live radio on Friday and Saturday night broadcast from Radio Tonka on Den Haag FM, and two afternoons of live performances streamed from the Institute of Sonology and West Den Haag. While the 2024 edition of On Air – On Site had a focus on Cuba, the festival is partnering with institutions in Chile for the 2025 edition. The Museo del Sonido in Santiago de Chile will stream the festival in a listening lounge and Tsonami in Valparaíso is participating with a fixed media program as well as with a live intervention. About the organizers: Sound artist and radio maker Margherita Brillada conceived this initiative recognizing the sociological dimension of radio as a public space for artistic involvement and community connection. In 2023, she initiated the festival as a practice-based project aligned with her artistic research in community radio and web radio. Leonie Roessler works with field recordings and art radio. Her work has been increasingly focused on both collaborative composition processes and the theme of marginalization. Margherita and Leonie have been working together for three years now, and are also running BUG Radio, a Social-Public Space for Artistic Practices.
On Air - On Site is a sound investigation of a temporary radio event consisting of a broadcast schedule of 48 hours of non-stop streaming, including live performances, fixed media, and radio artworks specifically composed for the festival by an international community of sound artists. The 2026-fourth edition of the festival will be broadcast online and on FM from 8 pm on May 22 to 8 pm on May 24 (CEST). There will be live events on Saturday, May 23 at the Institute of Sonology and on Sunday, May 24 at West Den Haag. The project explores the boundaries of being simultaneously on air in a physical and virtual space, challenging different radio formats. On Air - On Site invites the involved artists and the public to reconsider the physical spaces as a context rather than a location and to rethink together a different relationship between communities and experimental radio practice.
EPISODES
On Air - On Site 2025: Back to the archive #16
19 March 2026"On Air - On Site" back to the archive: these 2-hours takes you step by step through the 2025 festival’s program. In this episode, we revisit and re-present the works featured during the festival, gu...