willits center for the arts: maria gilardin

Maria Gilardin

Inspired by the anti-war movement, the counterculture and music of the 1960s, Maria dropped out of a middle class life and never looked back. She traveled in the early 70s in Europe and North Africa working in factories and cheap restaurants. Returning to the Bay Area in 1973, she collaborated with Mime Troupe founder R.G. Davis on Bertolt Brecht and Epic Theater. In 1988 she did the visual design, including photos and film, for a play on the impact of the car on 20th century culture, economics and foreign policy: The Life of the Automobile, co-directed with R.G. Davis. She then wrote and directed a second piece on car-culture, entitled Autocracy. Both productions were met with great hostility by Bay Area media. The Examiner reviewed Autocracy under the headline: "Gilardin's Play Makes You Carsick."

While teaching part time in the Arts and Social Change department of New College, Maria began producing radio at Pacifica station KPFA. She co-founded the Women's Department and produced for news, public affairs and literature. She began working with the head of the Drama and Literature Department, Erik Bauersfeld, in 1989. That began a collaboration on special projects in radio drama and radio arts that has continued to this date and involves Lawrence Ferlinghetti and sound designer Jim McKee.

In 1992 Maria began producing a weekly 29 minute independent public affairs program, Time of Useful Consciousness, heard on KZYX and nationally. The program takes it’s name from aeronautics: “the time between the onset of oxygen deficiency and the loss of consciousness…the brief moments in which a pilot may save the plane.” During the first 8 years of TUC Radio, in collaboration with the International Forum on Globalization (IFG), Maria made public the anti globalization work of the IFG and produced a radio series on the dangers of megatechnolgy and biotechnolgy. She participated in the Neo-Luddite summit with Chellis Glendinning, Kirkpatrick Sale, Wendell Berry and Stephanie Mills that was organized by the IFG. Supported by the Foundation for Deep Ecology, Maria did a tour of ecological disaster sites on Indian land through the Western States, documenting gold and uranium mines and toxic waste dumps. Maria continues to tell the untold story of the impact of big corporations on society, foreign policy, and the environment.

Maria spent the last 8 years hand-building a straw bale house in the mountains above Ukiah. She moved the TUC Radio studio during the 2008 solstice fires and divided her time producing radio and fire fighting. She thanks all the amazing local experts in alternative building, off grid technology, and sustainable gardening for their help in making this beautiful area her home.

Maria Gilardin / TUC Radio
P.O. Box 44
Calpella, CA 95418
1 (707) 463-2654
TUC Radio