Transmissions
Marsification: A Tale of Planetary Grief
Lily Sloane (US 2024)
Lily Sloane (US 2024)
49 min
Today we are being increasingly bombarded by the idea that humanity can and should expand to Mars. Coined in 2020 by the art collective Bureau of Linguistical Reality, the neologism Marsification critiques the idea that we can reset civilization by escaping to “Planet B”.
Marsification: A tale of planetary grief is a concept album audio artwork that unsettles seductive astro-colonial fantasies of leaving a damaged Earth for an uninhabited Mars. These 16 vignettes are designed for individual experiences and community dialogues as we process this interplanetary moment in all of its dissonance. Marsification:
A tale of planetary grief weaves together textured soundscapes, spoken dialogue, satire, hyper pop, whimsy, humor and heartache, non-fiction and science fiction, science and poetry, fantasy and history, with travels into inner and outer space. How can we examine assumptions about the future? And how do we listen properly to the ghosts that haunt the present?
Written and created by Lily Sloane and Zara Zimbardo
Narration and voice acting by Lily Sloane, Zara Zimbardo, and Chelsea Kigano
Audio production, music and sound design by Lily Sloane
Editorial support from Keisha TK Dutes;
Sound consultation from Adriene Lilly
I Used To Know H.I.M
Yasmine Dankwah (UK 2023)
Yasmine Dankwah (UK 2023)
24 min
A poetic retelling of the history of Hip-Hop from the perspective of a Black female until the mid-'90s and the emergence of the Native Tongues Movement. The piece features references to the 15-year-old Roxane Shante and her rap battle with Busy Bee Starski, the influence of the Hip-Hop trio The Sequence and one of the first conscious raps to exist!
An extract of this piece was featured twice on BBC Radio London to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop in 2023.
This piece was commissioned by Chronic Insanity Theatre as part of their Digital Literary Department.
Writer and Sound Designer: Yasmine Dankwah
Actor: Adelaide Banks
Director: Segen Yosef
Producer: Chronic Insanity Theatre
The Negro of The Abyss
Maleek Dapaah (UK 2024)
Maleek Dapaah (UK 2024)
16 min
Set in the heart of Victorian London, The Negro of the Abyss reimagines the infamous Jack the Ripper murders from the perspective of Jane Doe, a forgotten black woman whose story unveils the harrowing truths of racial and social injustice.
Written/Directed by Nifty Noel.
Produced by Maleek Dapaah
Invisible Cities
Will Gore and Esme Curtis (UK 2024)
Will Gore + Esme Curtis (UK 2024)
14 min
A sonic interpretation of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities created for an immersive installation at the XMTR Audio Festival 2024.
Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is an architectural exploration of the complex relationships between memory, place, subjectivity and desire. Told through accounts of 55 fictitious cities, Will stands in as our tour guide, inviting us to look out of ‘sound windows’ that look out onto some of Calvino’s fantastical spaces.
In Ersilla, to establish the relationships that sustain the city's life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency. When the mesh of strings becomes too much and the inhabitants can no longer walk through the streets, they leave to set up a new city. All that remains is a labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain; spider-webs of intricate relationships seeking a form.
“These are fantastical, beguiling places, where things are never as they seem. There's Hypatia, a city of beautiful blue lagoons but where "crabs were biting the eyes of the suicides, stones tied around their necks"; Laudomia, the city of the unborn, whose inhabitants have constructed a parallel city for those yet to come; Octavia, the spider-web city, whose residents live suspended over an abyss, supported by a net they know won't last long; and Argia, a city with earth instead of air.”
Written, Produced by Will Gore
Assistant Producer/Voices Esme Curtis
Brothers
Giacomo Bagni, (IT 2024)
Giacomo Bagni (IT 2024)
13 min
Giacomo and his father have had a fragmented relationship for years. Then, all of a sudden, a new character appears, replacing Giacomo as a son. Based on the author’s biographical story, Brothers is a trip in his inner world while he tries to understand what happened and make peace with it. A fresh take on autofiction, the piece is constructed by using a mixture of first person narration and re-constructed dialogues from the past, with the author inhabiting and voicing all the characters as a way to materialize his inner discussions and trying to make sense of them.
Written, Produced by Giacomo Bagni
Music by ST.ELVIO
The Stone Men of Newcastle
Daniel Hinds (UK 2022)
Daniel Hinds (UK 2022)
14 min
The Stone Men of Newcastle is a sequence of poems told through the eyes of The Commuter, the speaker and poet-figure, as he encounters the statues of Newcastle as part of his daily life working in the city. The sequence takes in Sir Antony Gormley’s vandalised Clasp sculpture, the St George and the Dragon war memorial at Eldon Square, another monument for the First World War, The Response 1914, and the Mercutio statue in Newcastle’s Theatre Royal. The Stone Men of Newcastle concludes with a consideration of the future figures we will immortalise in bronze and stone. The sequence enters into the current debate, typified by the Rhodes Must Fall movement and the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol, on how we engage with art and history in the form of statues. The statues sometimes co-exist uneasily with their setting: they are surrounded by the distractions of modern life, represent a past impossible to compete with or at odds with our values, and are vulnerable to defacement. Yet, they can also be sources of inspiration, beauty, and connection to the past, sites of contemplation as well as conflict.
Writer Daniel Hinds
Cast: Dan Pyre and Stacey Ghent
Lead Audio Production Partner: Naked Productions
Partners: BBC New Creatives, Tyneside Cinema, Arts Council England, BBC Arts.
Beast Country: Chapter One
Ewan Cameron (UK 2024)
Ewan Cameron (UK 2024)
17 min
Chapter one of a three-part audio fiction series with elements of folk horror and magical realism.
“Don't let this die. Don't let us die. Because I'll never forgive you if you do.”
Phil Ainsworth is 54 and deeply sad. He is preparing for the annual village Beast Hunt. For hundreds of years, the men of his family have led a march in to the woods in search of a mystical pig-like creature. But for Phil it is a time for reopening old wounds and coming face to face with the reason for all his sadness.
Written, Produced by Ewan Cameron
Application Declined
Alice Foxall (UK 2024)
Alice Foxall (UK 2024)
7 min
A dystopian fiction focusing on themes of race and the benefits system. Sara and Claire meet up over coffee (well, a turmeric-matcha latte) and finally have a decent catch up. But niceties turn sour and lattes grow cold as the government’s new rules on child applications create rifts between old friends.
Written, Produced by Alice Foxall
Actors: Verity De Cala, Ese Osamede
Mixed by Transmission Roundhouse