Not for Profit: An Interview With Tosia Ulatowska of the FLAUTA Collective & Radio Kapitał

tosia_ulatowska_radio_ktore_slucha_fb_post.jpg, default, 'The Radio that Listens, Radio Kapitał', image: courtesy of Tosia Ulatowska

music

lifestyle & opinion

Culture.pl Interviews

With Tosia Ulatowska, we discuss the emergence of Radio Kapitał – the first Polish community radio station – and the FLAUTA collective, both created to fill a gap in the need for a space for events that would – through electronic music – ‘capture the emotion and spirit of today’s world.’ How does music influence culture? Or culture, music? What is the political dimension of music? All this and more in my in-depth interview with ‘daisy cutter’.

Tosia Ulatowska [aka ‘daisy cutter’] is a classically trained pianist turned DJ. She is also an art historian and curator who graduated from the Faculty of Artistic Research and Curatorial Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where she defended her diploma on the political potential of social choreography. Co-founder of the FLAUTA collective, which organizes benefit events for people with refugee experience, and Radio Kapitał – the first Polish community Internet radio station that broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is a modern platform for social and artistic dialogue, presenting original programmes on culture, society, history, literature, art and music in a wide variety of genres. Radio Kapitał is also a response to the need to create an independent and non-commercial space for expression, grassroots activity – not for profit, but for personal satisfaction and social benefit.

Agnes Dudek: Tosia, please tell me a little about yourself – about your background, passions, interests, hobbies.

Thumbnail — Tosia Ulatowska, photo: Alicja Lesiak

Tosia Ulatowska: I’d say that my practice lies at the intersection of the art world, cultural animation, grassroots activism and the electronic music scene. I am particularly interested or even excited by the spheres in which these worlds cross over. When I was in high school, I decided not to continue my music education, but to apply to the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. I took drawing and painting classes for a while, and it was not at all obvious to me whether I wanted to go in the direction of practice or art theory. I chose theory because I felt that what prevailed in me was the desire to acquire and process knowledge and use my sense of organization and production. Nonetheless, after a few years I returned to music as a DJ and now it is my main occupation and source of income. One of my main goals now is to produce music. I am also starting a yoga instructor course soon – developing interest in physicality and bodily movement, which is by the way also addressed in my scientific work.

AD: Where did the name ‘daisy cutter’ originate from – what’s the story behind it? What do people call you?

TU: When I was looking for a DJ alias, I heard the name ‘daisy cutter’ during a college class. It was a lecture on 20th and 21st century humanities regarding the Vietnam War. Not many people realize that daisy cutter is actually the name of an American bomb. I, of course, do not refer to the war effort here, my intention was to reverse the sense towards a positive dimension – daisy cutter as a feminist force in the electronic music scene. I was very motivated to feminize the scene, because while organizing grassroots events I felt the gender disparity firsthand – especially while trying to put together equal line ups. Today it is much better, but as in every sphere of life, the struggle against patriarchy does not stop. Fun fact – some time after me, the same name was adopted by a girl DJ from the US. But we clarified the situation, and later this year I will again be the only daisy cutter in the world.

AD: Were you always passionate about music? When did you come to realize this is a passion you wanted to pursue – to make something out of it, to contribute to culture with it?

TU: Music has been on the agenda in my life from the beginning. My dad is a jazz musician, double bassist, pianist. He studied musicology. It must be admitted that he was not very enthusiastic about sending me to music school – he was aware of how much effort and uncertainty it would cost me. Fortunately, my mother pushed and I got into the music school on Miodowa Street in Warsaw, where my specialty was piano and rhythmics. It’s a very good school, but when I was a teenager, I began to feel its conservatism and the music environment began to tire me. And it wasn't until years later that I realized this teaching style had somewhat traumatic consequences – as I can see, for example, that playing the piano for pleasure is beyond my reach. This is said by quite a few people who also graduated from music schools.

Recently, I realized that by a circuitous route, through non-music-related studies along the way, I have returned to dealing with music – but on my own terms and in a way that is not so limiting, but instead opens up new possibilities and connections. And electronic music, from the perspective of my subjective experience, is more effective when it comes to capturing the emotion, the spirit of today's world as I perceive it. Added to this is the club culture movement, which I have soaked into and which, despite various crises caused by the capitalist, business takeover, still continues to make sense to me.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Tosia Ulatowska, photo: Grzegorz Jasina

Picture image

tosia_ulatowska_fot._grzegorz_jasina-s.jpg

AD: In your opinion, how does music define culture, and vice-versa, how does culture define music?

TU: This question would require a very extensive answer, but the substance would be that music or even more broadly – the sound sphere is an irreplaceable element of culture and social life. Whenever I have pondered whether it is even possible to claim the superiority of one type of art over another, I have come to the conclusion that the uniqueness of music is firstly its temporal dimension, and secondly its physical dimension – music can actually enter our bodies, move our tissues, affect the nervous system directly. This is something that painting or sculpture does not do. Music has also been irreplaceable when it comes to community unifying practices since the dawn of time.

It is very interesting to observe new trends, tendencies or sound inventions around the world. After all, this is an accurate testimony to the state of today's culture. Except that it's hard to keep up. Music also has an important political dimension, as Plato already pointed out. One can mention the battle-rousing, more or less spontaneously created musical pieces, for example protest songs – present in every social movement. Sound studies, like performative studies, have begun to play an important role in cultural studies in recent years. In my master's research, I focused on the audio sphere of protests or demonstrations, but it is worth mentioning Antek Michnik, one of the people who also founded Radio Kapitał, who recently completed his doctorate on the audio sphere of World War II.

AD: Tell me about the history of starting Radio Kapitał as well as FLAUTA. What was the inspiration? Was it a group initiative? Were you inspired by radios like NTS?

TU: I’d start with FLAUTA, not only because of the chronological order, but because this initiative defined my interest in collectivity and intermedia activities, allowed me to get acquainted with the local scene and meet many people actively co-creating it. We started FLAUTA as a collective in late 2016. As a group of friends, mostly students, consisting of DJs, graphic designers, people interested in the electronic music scene and the art world – we wanted to create a space for events, which we lacked in Warsaw at the time. I, with my curatorial and organizational sense, naturally became the driving force behind the initiative.

This was the moment when two important clubs closed, namely 1500m2 in Powiśle and Nowa Jerozolima in the City Centre. We were motivated by the need for something new and fresh, but also probably by the need to make our presence felt as a new generation on the scene. At the same time, it was a time of exacerbation of the migration crisis in Europe, just after the elections, when the topic escalated in the media and was the cause of increasingly deep polarization. We felt it and were concerned, and wondered what we could do to help refugees from the position of students who cannot afford to go to refugee camps or support them financially. We decided that FLAUTA would always be a nonprofit event, with all proceeds going to help refugees. We learned everything from scratch – from the organization of the event, programming, sound, lighting and decorations, to the super-important issues of research and choosing trusted organizations to which we would donate ticket profits. We quickly found out that it works best to work with specific people with whom we can meet, talk, and find out in detail what the money we raise will be spent on. That's why we worked for a longer time with Michał Borkiewicz and the organization Chlebem i Solą (Bread and Salt), and then Marina Hulia and her initiative Dzieci z dworca Brześć (Children from the Brest Station). The last events we did were in support of our friends from the NGO Podróżnych Ugościć, who help on the Polish-Belarusian border and support refugees who are starting a new life in Poland.

We operated without funding, and this would not have been possible if it were not for the hospitality of the Przychodnia squat, which allowed us to do events in its space in the centre of Warsaw for the first few editions. Thanks to this, I got to know the squat culture, learned how such a collective works, what their meetings and discussions are like, in a word – how one builds such an alternative reality outside the system. It was very inspiring. Our events were very popular, people came in crowds and FLAUTA was perceived as a quality initiative with a distinctive analog visual style and diverse line ups. It can be said that we popularized doing live slikscreen printings during the event, which is a common practice today. We invited artists to design patterns for us and people could leave the event with a unique piece of clothing, the proceeds of which also went to the benefit’s cause. We were invited to participate in the theatrical festival Malta in Poznań to organize FLAUTA there and I also managed to organize a party at the U-jazdowski Castle, Centre for Contemporary Art in late 2018. But after that I went for my Erasmus exchange and immediately upon my return, I set about creating Radio Kapitał. The social character of our group changed, everyone went their own way and it was not easy to get together again to create something.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

A Flauta event at U-Jazdowski Castle 2018, image in the background by artist Jakub Gliński, photo: Zuza Siwek

Picture image

flauta_csw_zamek_ujazdowski_2018_obraz_jakub_glinski_fot.zuza_siwek.jpg

I feel that a new chapter for FLAUTA began with the pandemic, when, due to the conditions, we came up with the idea of organizing a soundsystem party on the beach in Dębki, a small town in Pomerania, where many people from our community regularly go on vacation. We have done it three times already, but no longer as a collective but rather an unaffiliated group of people willing to organize this special event or perform at it. I myself am not sure what will be next for this project, regret not to continue it, but at the same time I know that there must be the will and energy to do something right. Maybe it will remain the kind of initiative that emerges in different places when there is a need and desire.

As for the emergence of the radio, a minimum of two circumstances contributed. For some time, there was a need among local initiatives, music and party collectives to establish a community radio, which we did not yet have in Poland. After the anti-fascist demonstration in 2019, which every year takes the form of a colourful street party in counterpoint to the nationalist Independence March, we organized a meeting of collectives, during which we talked about the fact that together we can do more – for example, to organize an event, the proceeds of which will be used for sound equipment, so that we can continue to independently organize events, protests, demonstrations. We called ourselves the MATKA (Mother) collective, a collective of collectives. We had a common communication channel, so that when Grzegorz Laszuk of Komuna Warszawa, a Polish offshoot theatre, ‘an anarchist community of action’ whose history dates back to the 1980s, approached us with the idea of starting a radio station, it hit very receptive ground!

The radio was created as part of the Komuna Warszawa’s 30th anniversary residency at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. There was some funding to set up the whole radio system, and I was offered the position of coordinator by Laszuk and Bogna Świątkowska of the Bęc Zmiana Foundation, who supported the project from the beginning. Many people and collectives immediately came on board and with joint efforts, ideas, and discussions we built our platform. After a few months, we founded an association, of which I became president and again learned everything from scratch.

The radio was growing rapidly thanks to the hard work of a dozen people, but there was always a lack of money to create a solid strategy and consistently implement it.

Most people have worked and continue to work at Radio Kapitał on a voluntary basis, just as they create their broadcasts. I – in a nutshell – experienced the best and worst sides of working in a non-hierarchical collective, where visions often differ and it is hard to control the evolution of the project. After a difficult relational experience and in the context of the need to focus on my master's thesis, I decided to step down from my position as president and step back from organizational processes for a while. Today, I still create shows from time to time, but primarily engage in co-creating a radio project financed by the city of Warsaw, which is the Radio Academy. Together with Diana Krawiec, for 2 years, we are developing a programme of radio workshops in which people associated in various ways with the radio conduct classes, for example, in voice emission, sound production, lyric writing or DJing. And in the next stage, a group of participants creates their own broadcasts inspired by thematic areas such as culture, tolerance and climate.

AD: What exactly is Radio Kapitał – what defines it? It’s the first of its kind in Poland, right?

TU: Radio Kapitał is a community radio that broadcasts and archives programmes via the Internet, the first such radio in Poland modelled on such radio stations as NTS in London, you mentioned, Noods in Bristol, Quantica in Lisbon, Red Light in Amsterdam and many others. It is a platform of expression for local initiatives, a bottom-up, independent and non-hierarchical platform. In addition to broadcasting, an important part of the radio is organizing events and animating creative communities and supporting them.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Catu Diosis at the Radio Kapitał studio in Warsaw, 2020, photo: Eliza Krakówka

Picture image

catu_diosis_at_radio_kapital_studio_photo_eliza_krakowka_warsaw_-_2020.jpg

AD: What is important for it?

TU: I think Radio Kapitał is a place for people who have different needs and visions – some people look at it as a medium where they can present their thoughts or creativity, others as a political, engaged, empowering medium. For me personally, the important thing is that its existence does not depend on advertising or cooperation with brands, nor on state subsidies, although funding is a very difficult topic. Other (mostly I think about western ones saying this) radios operate largely thanks to financial support from the community or European grants. With Radio Kapitał, there have been various attempts to ensure financial stability, but this depends on many factors. In retrospect, it seems to me that the most important thing is to have good leadership, and unfortunately, I no longer believe in collectivism when it comes to project management. Now, there are discussions about the future of the radio, what it is for the people, if and why they need it, what are the biggest problems it faces after these 3 years of operation. We will see what happens next.

AD: How is Radio Kapitał changing the way we listen to or consume music?

TU: It certainly stands in opposition to mainstream and commercial music, but frankly, I think it's still too niche to talk about any general change. For that, there is definitely value in being able to get to know the artists, producers or labels we wouldn't otherwise know about.

AD: What makes the Radio unique? Could you elaborate?

TU: Perhaps the fact that this is the result of the first attempt to create a community radio station in Poland. And that it has succeeded in uniting many different creative communities, subject areas, institutions and grassroots initiatives through this single platform. However, I also have my doubts that it still seems unique. I observe that a lot of people or collectives no longer create programmes or are not involved in the development of the radio. I had to step back myself, for the reasons I described above. It's sad, but there's no denying that creating such a platform in this day and age is very difficult and requires enormous dedication, logistics, fundraising, application writing and people management skills. However, I certainly hope that something good will come out of the brainstorming that has recently started in this crisis and that the radio will survive.

AD: From what I’ve observed, Radio Kapitał has a bit of a cult following, would you agree?

TU: I honestly don't know, but I'm glad to see that there are still new people involved, new people are finding out about it, learning to create radio programmes themselves or organise events under the auspice of Radio Kapitał.

AD: What are the plans for the future of Radio Kapitał?

TU: As I said, I am not yet sure to what extent I myself will be involved in the organisation of the radio, but I see that there is fertile ground for changes for the better, for new ideas, for a reformulation of the structure of the radio. We are aware that the radio programme needs to be rethought, that it has grown too much and that it seems chaotic to most listeners. We know that there is a need for a different approach to management, aesthetic and ideological coherence, effective marketing, however businesslike it may sound. I hope that we will continue with the Radio Academy, and maybe there will be other urban projects where what is most important in the potential of radio can come to fruition. If the situation stabilises, it would be great if Radio Kapitał’s branches were also active in other cities, as we dreamt of at the beginning. But at the moment it is difficult to say anything with confidence.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Community picnic debate on the collective creation of radio in Warsaw, July 2020, photo courtesy of Tosia Ulatowska

Picture image

community_picnic_-_debate_on_collective_radio_creation_warsaw_-_july_2020.jpg

AD: Are you using Radio Kapitał to support causes – like helping those who are currently seeking refuge from the war in Ukraine?

TU: There were several collectively created campaigns, headed by benefit compilations – for example for Belarus – which were a good way of providing financial assistance during the pandemic when events could not be organised. All can be found on the radio's Bandcamp profile. There were also several symbolic protest actions on the radio when we broadcast special materials, like during the women's strike.

AD: If you weren’t doing this, what else do you think you would be doing?

TU: I would probably be doing my PhD by now. But the truth is that I can't focus on one thing in life, I like variety and being flexible in what I do for a living, even if it may be stressful sometimes. And besides that, I would probably develop another socio-cultural initiative, because I truly care about club culture and connecting communities in Warsaw.

AD: What kind of music do you prefer playing?

TU: I explore very different genres of electronic music, depending on the situation. I like playing faster club sounds like techno and related genres with acid or a trance vibe, but I also enjoy a more chill, downtempo selection which can be played in a bar, on the radio or at a daytime event. I am constantly digging up new things and reflect on what I identify with, so my style is evolving. If I had to point to any common denominator it would be a sensitivity to harmony or melody, but other than that, I play really eclectically.

AD: Why do you think unconventional, more grassroots-like initiative are important?

TU: Because they are doing a difficult job, without which many people's lives would be much harder. Indeed, many things would not be possible without them, starting with things like safe medical attention for women, supporting victims of violence, helping refugees fleeing war and freezing in Polish forests, all the way to strengthening LGBT communities, fighting for equality and freedom of choice. I can't imagine how all of this would work if it weren't for activists.

AD: Is there something Radio Kapitał will not play?

TU: The rules are simple, there is no condoning of hate speech or discrimination and no advertising of products.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Tosia Ulatowska, photo: Krzysztof Karpiński

Picture image

tosia_ulatowska_fot._krzysztof_karpinski.jpg

AD: What was the last thing you listened to?

TU: I've been playing a lot in recent weeks, so in my free time I mostly listen to podcasts about philosophy, mental health and relationships.

AD: And when it comes to music, what kind of changes would you like to see in Poland or Warsaw?

TU: I wish the homogenization of music would not progress, but that's just wishful thinking. It is known that genres such as hip-hop or pop accumulate the most money, they have the biggest tours and festivals. But to be honest, I don't think about this on a daily basis. I think a lot about clubs in Poland – many factors contribute to their success or failure, just like whether people go out to have fun at night. Financial crisis caused by war and inflation, lack of interest in new music or dissatisfaction with what clubs offer. I understand that not everyone is attracted to techno culture and dancing the night away, but from my perspective, it's a beautiful, anti-system tradition that has grown out of a community spirit, inspiring people to unite for important causes beyond the dance floor. I hope that the Polish scene will develop without looking at the West, without trying to catch up with it, but by strengthening what we have the best of, promoting Polish artists and local DJs.

AD: Thank you so much!

_LINKS:

_{https://radiokapital.pl}

_{https://www.instagram.com/flautaflauta/}

_{https://www.instagram.com/daisy___cutter/}

Language English