Transmissions
XMTR Radio Hour Ep27: Earlid - Hubris and Humility with Joan Schuman
Social Broadcasts (UK 2024)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2024)
60 min / Episode 27 of 27
This XMTR (Transmitter) Radio Hour is dedicated to Earlid a gallery of evolving exhibits of sound art. US based Earlid founder and curator and seasoned radio practitioner Joan Schuman talks through a selection of five audio works that come under the theme Hubris and Humility. Works featured are by Bassel, Meira Asher, Evangeline Riddiford Graham and Joan Schuman.
Works featured:
1. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it
Myra Al-Rahim aka Bassel, 2019
https://www.earlid.org/posts/cycles-of-atrocity/
2. Cicatrix
Joan Schuman, 2008
https://www.joanschuman.com/hyperacousia/posts/cicatrix
3. Still Sleeping
Meira Asher, 2016
https://www.earlid.org/posts/meira-asher-still-sleeping
4. Dog Woman: An Interview
Evangeline Riddiford Graham, 2020
https://www.earlid.org/posts/dog-woman
5. The Hitman
Joan Schuman 2021
https://www.joanschuman.com/hyperacousia/posts/how-you-treat-them-is-what-you-are
Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio
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Ghost Wolf
Joan Schuman (US 2023)
Joan Schuman (US 2023)
13 min
The sovereignty of bodies is conjectured through a shuffle of voices across the scaffold of hollow spaces—the mouth, pelvis; curled fists and open heart.
These voices spin and blur into an invitation to listen beyond the exacting stories we find comfort in. Imagine the wolf, hunted almost to extinction across centuries in the U.S. and their ever-strident returns. We fear them as we conjecture dreamscapes from their howls.
These spectral creatures and their autonomous nations fiercely compel some communities to seek their annihilation; others strive for management.; some are satisfied in the certainty of their hidden slinking. It’s a mirror to contemporary political dogfights over bodily dominion, of conviction and control. In a poetic mix of voices, in the barely sung utterance, in barking and yipped snarls, there’s a swirl of imaginary wolves inside the body’s cavities.
There’s also an urgency to stray across landscapes of narrative around fears and survival. We contend with a tension of opposites. The same person who absolutely values the sovereignty of reproductive rights for women might be the person who falls easily to the sway of another faith—a solid belief in government control of disease and culture, bodies and politics, scientific literacy and objectivity.
Like the metaphor of unseen wolves, there is a trope of hysteria that is palpable depending on the bodies and the faith in them. Can these disparate stories about sovereignty be open to debate? Felt in the body itself? Formed in another kind of skulking, a striding low across the loamy, forest floor?
Written, vocalized and composed by:: Joan Schuman
This I is Made of Paper
The Paris Review (US 2023)
The Paris Review (US 2023)
21 min
Pulitzer Prize winner Sharon Olds discusses sex, religion, and writing poems that "women were definitely not supposed to write,” in an excerpt from her Art of Poetry interview with Jessica Laser. Olds also reads three of her poems: “Sisters of Sexual Treasure” (Issue No. 74, Fall–Winter 1978), “True Love,” and “The Easel.”
Production and Sound Design - John DeLore
The Paris Review
Generative Engine
Joan Schuman (US 2022)
Joan Schuman (US 2022)
10 min
Sounds and stories, like dreams, elude our grasp towards a future deemed to be untouched, untarnished.
Along a series of voiced ‘book pages’ echoing from Joan’s creative sonic archive of more than 20 years ago, comes an intersection generated with material lifted up from the unconscious. Collisions of narrative are reconsidered along the timescape of dreams. It’s very much of the now and of a past that appears in the present. What is spoken and whirled emits a barely linear story accessing the cycles of death, but also the collective symbology of end-times and freedom.
This melding is driven by an energetic stirring of borrowed lines from the poet-theorist, Nicole Brossard, and the theorist-philosopher Gilles Deleuze—from texts produced in the early 1970s (A Book by Brossard and Negotiations by Deleuze). These ‘pages’ comprised a sonic engine originally played in a gallery space and ceded over to the machine’s shuffle mode. Now, in present time, both a past and a future unfurl. The ship of the night floats through turgid waters. A neat continuum of story is interrupted within itself swirling like an invertebrate, horizontal and regenerate. The underworld knows no time. Sounds, like dreams, elude our grasp towards a future deemed to be untouched, untarnished.
Vocals + mix: Joan Schuman
Texts + Words: Nicole Brossard + Gilles Deleuze
Composition: Joan Schuman derived from Creative Commons licensed freesound
Where do I Belong: Shock Waves and City of the Richter Scale
New Perspectives Theatre ( UK/IQ 2023)
New Perspectives (UK / IQ 2023)
5 min
7 min
A collection of short poems and stories from twelve writers living in Baghdad and Nottingham, offering a unique window into the lives of those in two distinct UNESCO Cities of Literature, featuring original writing from emerging and established artists, with an emphasis on under-represented voices. The 12 podcast episodes have developed through online conversations, pairing the writers to reflect and explore themes that connect their pieces to create a series of duets:
Episode 1: City on the Richter Scale
by Sadek Mohammed (poet, translator, essayist and academic; Baghdad)
A contemplation of a blood-stained city
Episode 2: Shock Waves
by Andy Barrett (writer and performer; Nottingham)
broken promises and new beginnings
Produced by New Perspectives
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La Cafetera
Labrador Basin (US 2021)
Produced by Labrador Basin (US 2021)
13 min, Episode 7 of 9
From somewhere you know, transmitted to you. Listen in, don’t tell anyone. As fantasy intoxicates reality, observation becomes drowned understanding.
The mysterious Labrador Basin combines field recording archive montage and poetry and with each episode we learn a little more about this allusive artist.
Producer: Labrador Basin
Listen to the series (In Spanish an English)
Submitted to XMTR
La Cafetera
Labrador Basin (US 2021)
Produced by Labrador Basin (US 2021)
13 min, Episode 7 of 9
From somewhere you know, transmitted to you. Listen in, don’t tell anyone. As fantasy intoxicates reality, observation becomes drowned understanding.
The mysterious Labrador Basin combines field recording archive montage and poetry and with each episode we learn a little more about this allusive artist.
Producer: Labrador Basin
Listen to the series (In Spanish an English)
Submitted to XMTR