Transmissions
In The Dark Bristol: Life Partners
Christina Hardinge (UK 2022)
Christina Hardinge (UK 2022)
10 min
In The Dark Bristol - New Producers
What happens when we reframe the relationship to our body as a life partnership?
Life Partners is an immersive unscripted story that brings this question to life, as Hania Fares recounts the highs and lows of her 32-year relationship to 'Bea'.
The piece is inspired by counselling/psychotherapy techniques that ‘bring to life’ trauma through characterisation, adapted by the producer into a device for documentary storytelling after her own experiences of working with this therapeutic process.
Christina Hardinge is an award-winning audio producer, filmmaker and artist working creatively in the field of documentary.
Her work has won the Charles Parker Prize and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Christina Hardings
In The Dark Bristol: Rewinding Time - Connecting Through Cassette
Alfie Skinner (UK 2022)
Alfie Skinner (UK 2021)
11 min
In The Dark Bristol - New Producers
A social history documentary bringing the 19-year-old Producer closer to finding out what his parents were like when they were his own age.
Going through their boxes of old records and cassettes, Alfie discovers long-treasured taped voice recordings, made by his Mum and Dad for each other in 1996.
Alfie’s parents met when his Dad was 19 and his Mum was 18. Just months after getting together, they were geographically separated, when his Mum went to teach at a school in the rural areas of Zimbabwe on her Gap Year, leaving his Dad back in Bristol.
The village where Alfie’s Mum was staying was really cut off - with no electricity, running water or phone-lines. Without being able to call or email, to stay connected, his parents’ recorded spoken letters for each other on cassette tapes and sent them by post, never imagining that anyone else would be listening to them 25 years later!
Curious about the technology that Alfie’s parents used to keep in touch, he and his girlfriend use isolation in lockdown to experiment with making their own tapes to communicate with each other.
Despite his excruciating embarrassment at having to listen to his parent’s recorded love letters to make the programme, Alfie comes to realise the important role that the tapes played in their relationship and, in a way, if they didn’t exist, then he might not either!
Produced by Alfie Skinner
Bricks: Bristoler Chronik
Cliff Andrade (UK 2021)
Cliff Andrade / Bricks (UK 2021)
45 min Episode 5 of 6
Audio Walks for armchair lsitening
Bricks Podcast is a chance to listen into the individual worlds of artists and creatives. Commissioned by Bricks, the episodes delve into the practice and storytelling of unique topics.
A walk to a place long forgotten becomes the basis for a rumination on memory, place, and the creation of personal identities. Cliff Andrade’s internalised audio adventure into the unique mental state entered into when walking.
More here
Written and Hosted by Cliff Andrade
Bricks Podcast
Down To A Sunless Sea: Waves
Down To A Sunless Sea: Waves (UK 2020)
Dave Pickering (UK 2020)
38 min Episode 16 of 18
This very personal podcast is about Dave Pickering and his dad and their relationship. It's also about death, old age, care, love, history, change, mental health, science, medicine, art, dementia and friendship. It brings together memoir, clips from over 10 years of recordings of his father and interviews with experts. It takes you on a journey down to a sunless sea.
episode is about movement, memory, change, time, distance, tears, connection, therapy, sadness, love, grief and everything else that can come in waves.
Dave has to come to terms with his father’s memory loss and the fact that no matter what he forgets, it can’t take away the love they have shared, that existed, and will always have existed, even when he has forgotten it; even when he is no longer alive to remember it; even when Dave’s forgotten it; even when Dave is no longer alive to remember it. It happened. And that has to be enough.
General content note for the series: death, dementia, old age, mental health issues Additional content note: euthanasia/suicide
Produced by Dave Pickering
With funding from the British Podcast Awards Fund and the Wellcome Trust
A Walking Scientist
Jasmina Al Qaisi (2020)
Jasmina Al Qaisi (2020)
10 min
Drawing thin lines between imagination and reality in an odd, yet common life situation- missing a flight. The monologues take the listener through different noisy layers of one voice changing tenses, presenting a possible future-past self which is just a coping mechanism for diverting racing thoughts of guilt. The play is centred around creating a new identity in a possible future: a walking scientist, a humorous being, but also an occasion for social critique from a dissident to conforming with a life ruled by capital. The piece is created with vernacular sounds: computer cooler, street shop alarms, walking sounds - mostly translated from noise to voice and back.
Written, performed and produced by Jasmina Al Qaisi
This piece was a recipient of Works for Radio from The Lake Radio and a longer version 2nd place in Burning Mic non-german speaking category for Berliner Hörspiel Festival of free Radio Plays
In The Dark: Surveillance
Derick Armah and Ivan d'Avoine (UK 2021)
Derick Armah + Ivan d'Avoine (UK 2021)
9 min
This audio essay is a young Black man’s observations on hyper-visibility in one of the most surveilled cities in the world.
Produced and written by Derick Armah and Ivan d'Avoine for 'The Hidden Part' on Short Cuts BBC Radio 4.
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark
In The Dark - Di Major
D Peterschmidt (US 2022)
D Peterschmidt (US 2020)
5 min
An abstract take on the traditional public radio two-way format, D explores the relevance of names.
Produced by D Peterschmidt as part of Union Doc’s “Augmented Audio Realities”
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark
In The Dark: Lithium Mania
Alice Boyd and Laura Grace Simpkins (UK 2021)
Alice Boyd + Laura Grace Simpkins (UK 2021)
5 min
Laura was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed lithium. Here she recounts the beginning of a troubled new relationship with a mysterious drug.
Co-Produced by Laura Grace Simpkins & Alice Boyd
Written and narrated by Laura Grace Simpkins
Music and Sound by Alice Boyd
Commissioned by the Wellcome Collection
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark
The Balloon
Talia Augustidis (UK 2022)
Talia Augustidis (UK 2022)
5 min
Balloons are usually about celebration, yet this one represents so much more. This subtle and touching piece takes the listener into a deeply personal moment.
Producer: Talia Augustidis
The Painting
Neil Sandell (CA 2019)
Neil Sandell (CA 2019)
9 min
This we much we know. The woman in the portrait is wearing pearls, leaning forward, smoking a cigarette. But the rest is unknown – who she was, her relationship with an unknown artist. It is open to speculation. This absence of information invites those who see her to project their own stories onto her. She is like a mirror. Knocked off balance by the painting, the narrator ponders what lies behind his obsession with the woman in the portrait. He revisits an upheaval in his life and a stark truth that he has been avoiding.
Writer/Narrator: Neil Sandell
Producers: Neil Sandell with Mira Burt-Wintonick, Cristal Duhaime & Sarah Geis Sound Design: Mira Burt-Wintonick & Neil Sandell
Selected by guest curator, sound artist and podcast producer Cristina Marras
“I find this piece fascinating yet disquieting for the way in which it manages to embody absence, making us feel all the melancholy of not knowing, that transcends the search for information on the object at the centre of the narration, to become subtle nostalgia, a sensation well known to all expats around the world.”