Vogue.com: Public School Launches a Radio Station at Art Basel Miami Beach
Tonight, Public School’s Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne will begin airing a new performance art piece, rendered as part of Miami’s The Confidante hotel’s Designers in Residence program: a pop-up radio station, live until December 3, with such guests as Daniel Arsham, José Parlá, Heron Preston, and Uncle Luke.
“We’re not fine artists, and we didn’t want to come up with a pseudo-fashion-art thing,” says Chow in South Beach.“Our thought was to create a platform for interactivity and immersion, while rounding up a mix of our peers from all different verticals.”
Those associates also include Derek Watkins, YesJulz, Selema Masekela, and Tarell Alvin McCraney, the screenwriter of Moonlight. “It’s a pretty open format,” Chow continues. “We paired up every guest with a DJ—there will be a music component and a talk component. There are all these political undertones, too, which is cool.”
The broadcast—dubbed WNL Radio, which is a common acronym used in Public School’s collections (in this case it stands for “We Need Leaders”)—will be streamed on PublicSchoolNYC.com and via TuneIn, the digital radio provider. Playlists are also going to be compiled for Apple Music.
So what do—or did—the guys listen to for inspiration? “One of my favorite shows was Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito on Columbia University’s WKCR in the ’90s,” said Chow. “They’ll be on, too.” And for Osborne? “Back in New York, it was all Hot 97 for me.”