Future Roots, Inc. / Lookout FM

Fund: $25,000

LOOKOUT FM is a West Coast terrestrial radio home for the broadcast of "transmission art:" experimental audio composition, modern serials, data sonification, radio plays, multi-day compositions, and radio-centric performances. Our broadcast areas in Burbank, Hollywood, and Pacific Palisades function as fully FCC-licensed FM exhibition spaces where transmission works are presented without chronological, structural, or commercial constraints. Radio is a public utility: we aim to foster an interest in artistic and abstract uses of the public airwaves.

The first LOOKOUT FM resident will be multi-disciplinary Lebanese-American artist Nour Mobarak. Mobarak excavates violence and desire—the compulsions and glitches in both a person or a nation state. Her body acts in voice, sculpture, sound, performance, writing, and video, as one hybrid part under current geopolitical conditions. For her LOOKOUT FM piece, recalling tactics from the Oulipo literary movement, Mobarak will transform text-based audio into “detourned” talk-radio compositions.