Transmissions
Here is Where We Meet : Sunday Life At The Lake
Joel Wanek (US 2022)
Produced by Joel Wanek (US 2022)
50 min
Here is Where We Meet is a sonic celebration of Lake Merritt, a long-form documentary radio project broadcast on KGPC 96.9FM in Oakland. Each episode weaves together field recordings and interviews conducted around the Lake. HWWM explores the unique diversity and biodiversity found around Lake Merrit, the myriad ways that everyday Oaklanders engage with it and with each other, and ultimately affirms that even in this time of rapid gentrification and change, Lake Merritt and Oakland are a place for everyone.
Lake Merritt is Oakland's central social space. It is where you see the beautiful, singular diversity of the city interacting and commingling. On Sundays, this is on full display: bbqs, salsa dancing, drumming, and endless people strolling around. This episode is soundwalk around the Lake on a busy, warm Sunday, taking in the variety of sounds and speaking to people along the way.
Producer: Joel Wanek
Broadcast on KGPC 96.9FM
The Fifth Siren: Water
Fill Productions (IT / UK 2021)
FILL Productions (IT/UK 2021)
22 min Episode 1 of 6
When the high tide reaches Venice, four sirens are sounded to warn the population of the incoming danger. Each one of them represents a growing level of emergency, the level of the rising water. Yet there is no sound after the last siren. In 2019, when the storm hit the city, nothing could have prepared Venetians for the level of destruction it was going to bring.
On the 13th of November 2019 an exceptionally high tide hits Venice, creating damage the city has not seen before. People’s homes and shops are destroyed, the power cuts off and the city plunges into a dark, desperate night, trying to rescue what it can. Could this have been foreseen? Are weather anomalies really an exception, or perhaps just something that’s going to happen more and more often? As the world stands watching, we wonder: is this only a cautionary tale for Venice, or for the world?
Written and Produced by Marco Magini, Paolo Nelli, Giorgia Tolfo, Maddalena Vatti
Sound design by Alex Robertson
Narrator: Emily Naylor
Support by Italian Cultural Institute London
Listen to the series
Radio Ballad: On The Edge (1963)
BBC (1963)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (UK 1963)
59 min
This new revolutionary format - radio ballad (BBC) conceived by folk musicians Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and the brilliant radio documentary maker Charles Parker in 1958, combining sound: songs, instrumental music, sound effects, and, most importantly, the recorded voices of those who are the subjects of the documentary. This had never been done before, and still sounds incredibly fresh today.
This Radio Ballad explores the lives of teenagers in the 1960’s with voices of young people from all over the UK. If you’ve seen C’mon C’mon where Joaquin Phoenix plays Johnny a radio journalist touring the US to talk to teens, this piece sounds even more ahead of its time.
Producer: Charles Parker
Music: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger
Listen to more Radio Ballads
The Process: What Is Financial Astrology?
Alanna Chance (UK 2022)
Alanna Chance / Somerset House (UK 2022)
29 min Episode 2 of 6
We’re used to experiencing the work of an artist in its final form – in the gallery, on the stage, or mixed on an album. But what has been the journey to get there? Somerset Housemersethouse.org.uk/ is home to a community of over 70 artists and makers.
This series goes behind the scenes of the process that some of these artists go through to get to the finished work.
Gary Zhexi Zhang is an artist interested in exploring the chimeric edges of global systems. Recently his research has taken him into the world of finance, where he’s been drawn to the sorts of speculative ways of thinking we might normally associate with the occult. Enter Financial Astrology, a way of forecasting the markets based on the positions of the cosmos. In this episode of The Process, Gary goes down the rabbit hole to try to understand this field and grasp why cryptocurrency in particular is so obsessed with the stars. He hears about some seismic events on the horizon from Christeen Skinner, a financial astrologist who has been working in the City of London for over 20 years and talks to social anthropologist and former equity fund manager, Philip Grant about how ideas of magic and finance overlap.
Produced by Alannah Chance
Produced as part of the Creators-in-Residence Programme 2021
Supported by The Rothschild Foundation
Edgeland
Hayley Suviste (UK 2021)
Hayley Suviste (UK 2020)
24 min
As Manchester’s streets and skyline are warped by the ever-accelerating process of urban renewal, the city’s edgelands and green spaces are at risk of being swallowed by waves of property development. Not only does this raise questions about the ecology of the city, as carbon sinks are flattened and wildlife is displaced, but it speaks to broader trends pushing urban residents away from shared space, community and local identity.
This project shines a light on these spaces and the activists, academics, and local people who have taken up the daunting fight against corporate interests in the city in the name of biodiversity, urban ecology and community wellbeing. As we are faced with crises of both environment and mental health, the role of public green spaces has become ever more crucial in the eyes of those who enjoy, nurture, and maintain them
Hayley Suviste is a sound artist and composer based in Manchester (UK). She works with field recordings, archival material, electronic hardware, and live instrumentation to create long-form compositions, sonic installations, and multimedia art projects. Inspired by folk traditions and oral histories, Hayley is interested in the role of sound and voice in constructing and reproducing cultural identities and socio-historical narratives and how new compositional technologies can engage communities with overlooked stories about their environments.
Produced by Hayley Suviste
Commsioned by HCMF
Trade Winds: Ayurveda to Big Pharma: the Wonder of Healing Plants
Scrolls and Leaves (IN 2021)
Scrolls and Leaves (IN 2021)
33 min Episode 6 of 8 of Trade Winds
Trade Winds explores how movement and migration across the Indian Ocean changed us.
In a windswept mountain pass, more than a hundred years ago, a towering Afghan man hacks a Scottish trader to death. Then the killer disappears. A British officer is determined to track him down and rides along the old Silk Route into western China. No sign of the killer but he does encounter a book of Ayurveda unearthed in the nearby desert. The Sanskrit lettering details the power of Healing Plants.
Produced by Mary-Rose Abraham and Gayathri Vaidyanathan
Sound design by Nikhil Nagaraj
For Scrolls and Leaves
Listen to the series
Cities of Memory: Paris Dadaphone
Guillaume Loizillon (FR 2016)
Produced by Guillaume Loizillon (FR 2016)
11 min
Dada Sounds marks a century of Dadaism by applying the techniques and practices of Dada to field recordings from around the world, bringing a Dadaist approach to the concepts of sound, place and memory and creating a new, Dada-inspired sound world.
A trip through Paris’ streets with a Dada inspired soundscape.
Producer: Guillaume Loizillon
Part of the Cities of Memory Dada sounds series
Everyday People Show: Chipata, My Beautiful City ft. Mai Olivia Kamuna
Drc. Jaèy (GHAN 2021)
Drc. Jaèy, for the AMBC (GHAN 2021)
15 min / Episode 18 of 24 (Season 3)
The Everyday People Show is a lifestyle and autobiographical documentary podcast that tends to curate the best of African/Black experiences through stories and sound.
What comes to mind when you hear 'Zambia?' In this episode of the Everyday People Show, Mailesi Olivia Kamuna - Zambia based physiotherapist and Yoga instructor, shares her everyday story. She takes us through a journey of experience and presence of growing up and living in the beautiful city of Chipata, Zambia. She also shares her experiences of living in India for 5 years while studying in college, the culture shocks, the similarities and dissimilarities between the home of Bollywood and home of the Victoria Falls.
Submitted to XMTR
Produced by: Drc. Jaèy, for AMBC
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
The Unfiltered History Tour - Hoa Hakananai'a
Vice World News (UK 2021)
Produced by Jesse Lawson For Vice World News (UK 2021)
15 min Episode 2 of 10
In school you learn about museums but you’re never taught to question how their collections ended up in their hands. According to many people, the British Museum is the world’s largest receiver of stolen goods. VICE World News brings you the stories of ten of these objects, told to you by people from the countries they were taken from.
The people of Rapa Nui – also known as Easter Island – carved Hoa Hakananai’a centuries ago. This living ancestor was taken by British sailors and given to Queen Victoria.