Transmissions
XMTR Radio Hour Ep24 : Tapes and Time
Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
60 min / Episode 24 of 24
This Transmitter Radio Hour is an ode to tapes and time, featuring Glasgow based sound artist Steve Urquhart’s Doing Bird a mixtape recorded with inmates at Perth Prison (Scotland), a meditation on time by Brighton based composer and sound artists Joseph Wilkinson and a wonky plunderphonic mixtape by Bristol based Limbo Tapes.
1. Radio producer and sound artist Steve Urquhart worked with inmates at HMP Perth engage with archive birdsong and oral history recordings from the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club in a unique, creative audio art collaboration.
You can listen to side B of Doing Bird here
2. Joseph Wilkinson is a composer, sound designer and audio artist based in Brighton, exploring the relationship between sound and our inner worlds. He collaborates with his wife and creative partner Cam Brandow as Farfar Studio, their combined channel for enchanting experiences through bespoke music, sound, and storytelling.
I sit in the shade is a short form documentary that is a meditation on time, our relationship to it, and the world around us. A mix of introspection, interviews with thoughts from authors, thinkers and tree-people.
3. Side B of Limbo Tapes is from a compilation of sounds made for monthly show Radio Limbo on Noods Radio, which is the flagship for cassette label, Limbo Tapes, a collaboration between Pete Hazell and Sean Lee.
You can hear side A of Limbo Tapes here
Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio
Follow the series
I Am Better Than I Was
Myriam Pruvot (BE 2018)
Myriam Pruvot (BE 2018)
14 min
Music and spoken word in fragments with texts taken from Mohamed Ali's speech before his fight with George Foreman in 1974 mixed with extracts from the diary of a young woman.
Produced by Myriam Pruvot
Remembering Stonewall
David Isay (US 1989)
David Isay (US 1989)
29 min
On Friday, June 27, 1969, eight officers from the public morals section of the first division New York City Police Department pulled up in front of the Stonewall Inn, one of the city’s largest and most popular gay bars.
At the time, the vice squad routinely raided gay bars. Patrons always complied with the police, frightened by the prospect of being identified in the newspaper. But this particular Friday night was different. It sparked a revolution, and a hidden subculture was transformed into a vibrant political movement. What began with a drag queen clobbering her arresting officer soon escalated into a full-fledged riot, and modern gay activism was born.
This documentary, broadcast on the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, is the first documentary — in any medium — about the riots. It weaves together the perspectives of the participants, from Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, who marshaled the raid, to Sylvia Rivera, one of the drag queens who battled most fiercely that night. The revolutionary impact of the riot is better understood by looking at life for gay men and lesbians in the era before Stonewall, seen through the eyes of people like Bruce Merrow and Geanne Harwood, a gay couple who have been together for 60 years, and Jheri Faire, an 80-year-old lesbian. Remembering Stonewall also examines how Stonewall affected gay politics through the voices of people like Randy Wicker, the first openly gay person to appear on television and radio; Joan Nestle, founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives; and yippie leader Jim Fouratt, who helped found the Gay Liberation Front on the third night of the Stonewall Riots.
This documentary comes from Sound Portraits Productions created by Dave Isay in 1994. Sound Portraits was the predecessor to StoryCorps and was dedicated to telling stories that brought neglected American voices to a national audience. This was David Isay’s first radio documentary.
Producer - David Isay
Narrator -Michael Schirker
The Colour of chalk: Both Sides of the Valley with Razia Aziz
Sonic Boom Audio + Alinah Azadeh. (UK 2022)
Alinah Azadeh / Sonic Boom (UK 2022)
47 min
"The Colour of Chalk" podcast is part of "We See You Now", a project dedicated to exploring diverse voices and connections to the South Downs National Park. The project is being led by writer and artist Alinah Azadeh, who has been commissioned by the South Downs National Park Authority as the first Writer-in-Residence for Seven Sisters Country Park and the wider Sussex Heritage coast in company with the skylarks, Alinah takes us on a Summer’s walk along the meanders of Cuckmere Valley to the sea, at the heart of Seven Sisters Country Park, with fellow writer Razia Aziz - to share her work and explore the landscape of family, honouring mothers, writing outdoors, seeing life from all sides and nature’s role in healing trauma. ‘Nature doesn’t see the divisions we see’
Hosted by Alinah Azadeh
Audio Production by Sonic Boom Audio
Supported by funding from Arts Council England as well as the South Downs National Park Authority.
Follow the series
Night Walking - A Call from Terry
Bianca Giaever ( 2023)
Bianca Giaever (US 2023)
29 min Episode 1 of 4
Constellation Prize, the podcast from The Believer magazine, talks to subjects about their existential problems—how art, God, and loneliness fit in their lives. Nightwalking, is a four-part mini series featuring the poet Terry Tempest Williams.
Bianca receives a call from a famous writer, Terry Tempest Williams, who suggests they do a project together. They plan to embark on a ritual—taking walks at night, and writing each other daily letters. Terry promises that this will bring them closer to God. Bianca has doubts.
Hosted and produced by Bianca Giaever
Letters to Ummi
Kohl Journal (UK 2023)
Khol Journal (LB 2022)
25 min
Overheard glimpses of intimate stories shared in rushed conversations had in scattered moments of safety and care amongst anonymous members of queer families. The conversations are in Arabic, Farsi, English, Cypriote Turkish and Kurdish. Letters To Ummi is an evolving multilingual, intergenerational and multifaceted project that centers non identifiable and anonymous ways of engagement, focusing on Queer West Asian, South West Asian, North African and East African+ realities, both from within the regions and their diasporas. It is an on-going project that centers lived experience and questions how to safely archive vulnerable and intersectional realities.
Sound: Letters To Ummi Community
Produced for Kohl Journal.
Blasstal #1: Moots
Lucy Dearlove and Katie Callin (UK 2022)
Lucy Dearlove and Katie Callin (UK 2022)
38 min Episode 1 of 3
In episode 1 of Blasstal, Katie introduces Lucy to the vegetable at the heart of Hop-tu-Naa traditions of the Isle of Man. They explore the island's folklore with poet and folklore expert Annie Kissack, attend a Hop-tu-Naa celebration at Cregneash, carve their own moots, and finally head out Hop-tu-Naa-ing around Peel. Everything you never knew about Moots or turnips and the traditions connected to this underrated root vegetable.
Hosted and produced by Lucy Dearlove and Katie Callin
Follow the series
Nobody Dies Here: Everyone is welcome, not everyone is welcome
Michelle Ransom-Hughes (AU 2023)
Michelle Ransom-Hughes (AU 2023)
29 min Episode 1 of 8
A beautifully produced audio portrait of the Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR) trial in North Richmond, Australia with health workers and people who inject drugs. In the entry zone, staff walk the fine line between extending a warm, non-judgemental welcome to all and adhering to licensing regulations. People from every walk of life present here to access the room.
Producer/ Writer/ Editor/ Sound Design/ Mix - Michelle Ransom-Hughes
Follow the series
Radio Armed Response
Claudia Wegener (ZA 2007)
Produced by Claudia Wegener (ZA 2007)
60 min
South Africa based artist Claudia Wegener from Radio Continental Drift walks the streets of two suburban communities in Johannesburg S.A. In door to door interviews, at times through intercom systems and across gates, she asks questions related to public safety and a privatised security system. The result is a radio artwork mixed from what the artist likes to call dramatic field recordings. In surprisingly intimate, often humorous conversations, narratives of a complex urban patchwork of communities unfold before your ‘very eyes’. Yet what unravels, far beyond ‘issues of security’, social and urban divisions are shared concerns, questions, stories and visions about living together.
Producer: Claudia Wegener
The original half hour audio piece from 2005 is reframed in recent footage for London’s art radio station Resonance104.4fm
Recommended by Paris based sound artist Dinahbird
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