Transmissions
XMTR Radio Hour Ep23 : Sea Change
Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
60 min / Episode 23 of 23
This Transmitter Radio hour is dedicated to a series of 'Audio Postcards' produced by Lucia Scazzocchio (Social Broadcasts) to accompany Sea Change part of At the Docks 2023, a new summer season of arts culture and events at the Royal Docks in East London. Curated by Invisible Dust, Sea Change brings artists together with leading academics and University College London inspired by research into sustainable responses to the climate emergency.
‘Sea Change’ is a term used for a substantial shift in situation or perspective and was first used in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’, a play with a background, like the Royal Docks, of sea voyages, developing globalisation and colonialism. Sea Change points to the future, to the need for changing practices, but also alludes to a pivot point of the climate crisis in the dock’s history – the move from sail to steam power. This development led to an enormous expansion in London’s trade and exchange of goods and peoples, which enabled modern day industrialisation, globalisation and with it the problems of climate change.
Artists Dana Olărescu, Raqs Media Collective, Melanie Manchot and Simon Faithfull give a unique insight into their commissions at the Royal Docks between 11-29th May.
Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio
Follow the series
Infinity = Zero
Alyssa Moxley (US 2014)
Alyssa Moxley (US 2014)
31 min
Audio Walks for Armchair Listening Mini Series
In Jorge Luis Borges’ story The Library of Babel, the world is made up of an infinite network of hexagonal libraries containing all possible iterations of books with 410 pages and 22 characters. Books can resemble each other in all but one letter. Some volumes can be read in multiple languages with entirely different interpretations. Others have meaning only coincidentally. The librarians who inhabit this world are overwhelmed with information, most of which is nonsense. In a search for deliberate meaning, many wander through the libraries in a quest for the Crimson Hexagon, a library containing books of small format, illustrated, magical, and containing revelatory insight.
Infinity = Zero produces the conditions for radio listeners to sculpt senseless cacophonies into form through their movement as they walk the halls and navigate obscure corners of the stairwells of 37 South Wabash, Chicago. In a participative choreography beginning at The Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, listeners will take the path of those who search for the archival material of insight and meaning within books, people, objects, and architecture. Fractured and collaged narratives create ambiguous worlds where the fictional world of hexagonal libraries interacts with the environment of the Sharp building’s hallways and archival collections.
Produced and Narrated by : Alyssa Moxley
Composed for broadcast on Radius FM from The Joan Flasch Artist Book Library
Radius is an experimental radio broadcast platform established in 2010 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Radius produces, exhibits, and distributes work by radio and transmission artists from around the world. Listen via wavefarm
No Birds Land
Tamsin Grainger (UK 2021)
Tamsin Grainger (UK 2021)
6 min
Audio Walks for Armchair Listening Mini Series
If a bird could write a poem maybe it would sound like this?
This is the sound poem for No Birds Land, an art and sound installation in the Trinity Tunnel on the Edinburgh cycle path network.
Before and after entering the tunnel, the air is full of birdsong; inside there is little or none. This sound-art installation recognises that no birds land or alight there (although occasionally one flies through), that it is a sort of 'No Man's Land' for birds, though humans built the sandstone structure to transport goods and each other between Granton Harbour and the rest of the city.
Written and Performed by : Tamsin Grainger
Listening To The Political Protests in Minsk, Belarus
Pavel Niakhayeu (BY 2021)
Pavel Niakhayeu (BY 2021)
29min
Audio Walks for Armchair Listening Mini Series
In this audio-essay you’ll hear how Minsk sounded during the political protests of 2020-2021, how the protesters and the state are fighting for the space with voices, noises and music. The field recordings are the starting points for a discussion on the multifaceted role of sound in claiming the urban and political space in Belarus.
An audio-paper created for 'Walking as a Question' conference (Prespa, Greece, 4-17 of July 2021). Pavel Niakhayeu tells a (part of the) story of the political protests in Belarus through the perspective of a right to walk out your house to voice your protest. There were no Covid-lockdowns in Belarus, but walking in the streets at ‘the wrong time / wrong place’, the very act of coming out of your house is political and can have dramatic consequences – arrest, fine, beating, even death.