Inquest Radio Remodel

Inquest Radio Remodel was a project that consisted of fabricated programming for an entire radio station. All of the programs on Inquest sound authentic, but are in fact entirely fictional. Using sound recording equipment, computers, and his own voice and music, Clough has written, narrated, scored, performed, edited, and fully produced a huge amount and an ambitious range of programs that include travelogues, documentaries, newscasts, sports shows, talk shows, and more. The programs are, literally, the result of a single voice and vision. Inquest, dubbed “a voice for most of Southern California and the Nation”, started as a small project in a social club of which Clough was a founder. The gallery lacked a radio, so the artist brought in cassette tapes of his shows, which he played quietly and constantly. The programs sounded plausible; throughout the eight-month life of the social club no one, including Clough’s colleagues, recognized the programming as “fake”.

The exhibition began with the idea of “remodelling” the radio station interior -something that the radio listener would not normally be able to appreciate. Here we presented three glass-enclosed radio console booths, fashioned after the art nouveau style, for the recording, engineering, and broadcast of radio content. As well as broadcasting a feed to the gallery space, the show was broadcast to the phone lines at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, where it was heard when you were put on hold. A portion of the radio content was also produced and broadcast within the gallery for the duration of the exhibition.