Mia Kara Numbers Station

This broadcast, titled Mia Kara Numbers Station after an Esperanto folk song, is based on espionage practices employed by governments in their attempts to undermine adversarial nation-states.

Numbers stations traditionally consists of a series of spoken numbers, tones, and clips from folk songs. These broadcasts proliferated during the Cold War and since the demise of the Soviet Union have actually increased. While there is ample evidence to support the theory of state-sponsored clandestine activity, these transmissions could easily be sound artifacts with no intended audience, no message being sent (secret or otherwise), or perhaps placeholders for future “actual” communication.

By employing the artificial and ultimately anachronistic international language of Esperanto, Mia Kara mimics the coded nature of traditional number stations while shifting their content towards past and future utopian ends. The Mia Kara Numbers Station broadcast is superficially indistinguishable from its state-sponsored counterparts, pointing to a strategy of inhabitation and subtle disruption.

Mia Kara Numbers Station was broadcast worldwide from a shortwave transmitter located in rural France in January and February of 2007 for an exhibition at LAXART in Los Angeles.

 

00:00