In this three-part series, listeners are invited to encounter artemisia, Queen Anne’s Lace and rue, guided by the artist’s voice  within a soundscape created by Obaro Ejimiwe.

These three plants grow wild both in the Americas and Europe; vegetal material travelling across geographical, political, and cultural borders. This sensorial encounter revolves around tasting as a form of relation, capable of materialising a connection between human and plant beings, and of nurturing forms of queer kinship and healing. 

Simultaneously it entails a process of assimilation and integration, where consumption becomes the currency that governs perception—resonating with the colonial power relations that manage the porosity of national borders.

Created by Luiza Prado de O. Martins with Obaro Ejimiwe

Post Production – Nastassja Siemensky

Copyright – Luiza Prado de O. Martins / Obaro Ejimiwe

The project considers mental wellbeing as a collective responsibility, focusing on the detrimental impact of Covid-19 and the spike of anti-Asian racism upon the mental health of Southeast and East Asian diasporas, refugees, and precarious migrants in the UK. Drawing upon Frantz Fanon’s seminal observation on the relationship between colonial oppression / violence and mental illness, this project conceptualises collective healing as performing justice.

This is the final episode series following the four seasons, taking a slightly different form whereby the music is the focus of the episode. Friends were invited to share a song that holds profound meaning to them and to talk through why it is special to them. As friends of Becoming Forest radio are speaking, Indonesian Songbirds can be heard in the background.

Thank you to those who have joined in holding this space of comfort and communal solidarity

This episode is bookmarked by two moments of departure and return. At the opening, you will hear a conversation, relatively mundane, between Cường and his great aunt, they were both walking through her leafy suburb on the outskirts of Hanoi, from many years ago. It was from a period when his time in Hanoi was coming to an end, and was readying himself to return to London. 

The episode closes with a moment with Cường and his young family after nearly three years of being away. An intimate everyday and benign moment around the breakfast table. This was a subtle way to highlight how Covid-19 disproportionately affects migrants from the Global Majority countries, where a whole host of factors have prevented many from returning, whether that be visa precarity, limitations related to Covid-19, distance and cost prohibitive factors amongst others.

Sun Sleeps - Words Like Swords

Lê Cát Trọng Lý - Introduce Mùa Xuân

The Boom - 島唄 (オリジナル・ヴァージョン)

Kim Choo-ja 김추자 - 거짓말이야

Lorie - Ngayon At Kailanman (Now and Forever) [Karaoke Ver]

Moonstar 88 - Migraine

Sugarfree - Kwarto

Victor Hutabarat - O Tano Batak

Nova - O Tano Batak

Trần Mạnh Tuấn - Quê Hương

Vincent Yuen Ruiz - Sunrise Mart

Various Artists - Song Birds of Indonesia - Murai Batu (Juara)

Various Artists - Song Birds of Indonesia - Pok Say

Various Artists - Song Birds of Indonesia - Daicu

Various Artists - Song Birds of Indonesia - Cendet #2

Various Artists - Song Birds of Indonesia - Cucak Ijo

Various Artists - Song Birds of Indonesia - Punglor Kembang (Kacek Kembang)

Various Artists - Song Birds of Indonesia - Kacerbang

Leaky Transmissions is a project by Nottingham-based artist Nastassja Simensky that explores changing land-use, and the potential of collaborative fieldwork involving artists and archaeologists. 

This episode of Leaky Transmissions for Radio Arts Catalyst takes us on a sonic journey: from South Yorkshire and the Sheffield Mind Garden in the centre of the city (developed with Harun Morrison as part of the Emergent Ecologies programme), up to the coal tips of the Rhondda Valley in Wales, and finally to the protected saltmarshes of the Essex Coast. 

Field recordings mingle with reflections on cultivation, listening and thinking about how we sonically orientate ourselves in space through three distinct landscapes.

With contributions from Ben Walkling, Malcom Hardy and Fran Halsall

Further episodes for Leaky Transmissions will be released throughout Autumn 202

In this three-part series, listeners are invited to encounter artemisia, Queen Anne’s Lace and rue, guided by the artist’s voice  within a soundscape created by Obaro Ejimiwe.

These three plants grow wild both in the Americas and Europe; vegetal material travelling across geographical, political, and cultural borders.

This sensorial encounter revolves around tasting as a form of relation, capable of materialising a connection between human and plant beings, and of nurturing forms of queer kinship and healing. 

The next episodes will be released monthly via Radio Arts Catalyst throughout autumn 2022.

Created by Luiza Prado de O. Martins with Obaro Ejimiwe

Post Production - Nastassja Siemensky

Copyright - Luiza Prado de O. Martins / Obaro Ejimiwe

Becoming Forest is a collaborative endeavour between the artist duo Breakwater (Youngsook Choi and Taey Iohe) and the radio producer, curator, activist Cường Phạm. Breakwater make installations combining performance, film, sound, photography, and text to explore postcolonial and intersectional identities.

The project considers mental wellbeing as a collective responsibility, focusing on the detrimental impact of Covid-19 and the spike of anti-Asian racism upon the mental health of Southeast and East Asian diasporas, refugees, and precarious migrants in the UK. Drawing upon Frantz Fanon’s seminal observation on the relationship between colonial oppression/violence and mental illness, this project conceptualises collective healing as performing justice.

In the third of four radio episodes that aim to provide and hold a space of solidarity and communal comfort, the artists invite listeners to join them for a conversation held during a communal hotpot meal. We invited three UK-based creatives, artist Bettina Fung 馮允珊, artist Yarli Allison, and writer Yin Lo to share their thoughts on food, homemaking, language, migration, decolonisation and more. The conversations are interspersed with acoustic captures of Hong Kong through rustling bamboo leaves, rippling water waves, and aeroplanes taking off over the city. 

Our sincere gratitude to the generosity of Ghost & John, who shared an extract of their sound piece ‘Radio Neighbourhood’, in this artwork, they are integrating dance performance in a public space with the postcolonial traumatic histories from Hong Kong, weaving aspects of political oppression, racism and homophobia, into a journey from harsh experiences into the healing process. 

We are grateful to Yarli for singing ‘阿波羅’ a pop song about a summer romance. We thank Bettina for singing ‘大懶堂’ song about winning the lottery and letting go of societal pressure to work for financial gain, & ‘如果陽光’ a song from an advert from a popular lemon tea drink. Lastly thanks to Yin Lo for sharing an extract of ‘Take Care of Yourself’. This piece is from a bilingual anthology of essays, 'Writing in Difficult Times', which was published in 2021 in Chinese and English by Cart Noodle Press. In the excerpt, Yin talks about the states of mind of a traveller, who may not have a place to return to."

Instituting with Care x Radio Arts Catalyst focuses on how institutions interact with, and sometimes interfere with, our bodies - how our experiences of institutions can be harmful, and how the models of institutions of care, mental health and science can be hacked or rethought. It includes contributions from artist Mary Maggic, artist, writer & researcher Jamila Prowse, and activist and researcher pantxo ramas. 

The broadcast forms part of Instituting with Care, a research project, event series and publication, which examines what it would mean to put practices of care at the forefront of institutional and infrastructural thinking: to build care into the fabric of our institutions. Instituting with Care draws on and speaks to the fields of instituting and instituent practice, reproductive labour, disability justice, accessibility, anti-racism, ecologies, feminisms, community healthcare and mutual aid. 

This broadcast is an extract of a longer conversation, which will be revisited for the eventual publication within the wider Instituting with Care project by Lucy Lopez.

Copyright: Lucy Lopez & Arts Catalyst.

Produced by Kitty Turner.

Speakers: Anna Santomauro, Jamila Prowse, Laura Clarke, Lucy Lopez, Mary Maggic, and pantxo ramas. 

Artist Hannah Rowan was in residence at Taipei Artist Village from January - March 2021, undertaking aquatic research into the mutualistic relationship between butterflies and plants in the marginal ecosystems of mangroves. 

This built upon her ongoing research into organic materials, as well as relationships between nature, technology and human-made objects. The research culminated in this sound piece that shares the artist reflections around water matters and ecologies.

This work is part of an International Residency Exchange Programme for early career artists with by Platform Asia and Tapei Artist Village, Taiwan.

Copyright - Hannah Rowan

Becoming Forest is a collaborative endeavour between the artist duo Breakwater (Youngsook Choi and Taey Iohe) and the radio producer, curator, activist Cường Phạm. Breakwater make installations combining performance, film, sound, photography, and text to explore postcolonial and intersectional identities.

The project considers mental wellbeing as a collective responsibility, focusing on the detrimental impact of Covid-19 and the spike of anti-Asian racism upon the mental health of Southeast and East Asian diasporas, refugees, and precarious migrants in the UK. Drawing upon Frantz Fanon’s seminal observation on the relationship between colonial oppression/violence and mental illness, this project conceptualises collective healing as performing justice.

In the second of four radio episodes that aim to provide and hold a space of solidarity and communal comfort, the artists invite listeners to join them for a polyphonic spring day, featuring birdsong, buzzing bees, weather, and Southeast and East Asian folk song and folk tale. There are also recorded messages of support for Violeta who recently lost her newborn granddaughter to Covid-19 from participants of the IRL Becoming Forest workshop. As well as an interview with Jack Shieh, the director of Vietnamese Mental Health Services, who has dedicated almost 40 years to community work.

Our special thanks to the generosity of - Arianna Mercado, who sang a children's song 'Magtanim Ay Di Bir (Rice Planting is Fun)', Almira Farid and her sister who sang 'Burung Kutilang', a song about birds that her grandmother used to sing for her and her sister, and Samboleap Tol for 'Sneha Knong Pel Reatrey (Lover by Night)' that reminds her a particular memory when she lived in Cambodia. Another thanks to Almira for guitar improvisation under a moonless sky. Plus the reading of bánh chưng bánh dày as voiced by Hana Le: a folk story about the origins of two glutinous rice cakes, one circle, bánh dày, eaten during festive occasions and one square, the bánh chưng, eaten during tết, the spring festival. And our very own Youngsook who sings a Korean folk song about rice planting."

Copyright Youngsook Choi, Taey Iohe, Cường Phạm & Arts Catalyst.

Produced by Kitty Turner.

Sound design by Lori E Allen.

Drawing on frequency, rhythm and sound healing, artist Evan Ifekoya hosted a series of four workshop sessions that aimed to bring the focus back to the body, addressing the questions: How does sound help us develop a greater awareness of our interior self? And what might this heightened awareness do for the collective? 

Through practices of listening, reading and vocalising together, the group investigated the healing properties and possibilities of sound.

The emerging mixtape resonates with the knowledges and practices shared during the sessions, bringing together participants’ contributions in a collectively realised sonic landscape.

Find out more about The School of Broadcasting here.

PARTICIPANTS

(in order of appearance in the piece)

Freya Shaw, Ratiba Ayadi, Yen Chun Lin, Antonia Luxem, Rosie Stephens, Rhona Eve Clews, Marina Georgiou 

Produced by Kitty Turner.

Sound design by Lori E Allen.

Graphic Design by An Endless Supply.

RESOLVE Collective’s \\\ INTERFERENCE, INTERRUPTION workshop sessions for The School of Broadcasting looked at the remote co-design of DIY instruments for ‘urban listening’ and ‘urban transmission’ and a collective mapping of different communities in Sheffield by locating and collating their sonic sense of place. Project influences spanned London’s 90’s Pirate Radio culture, Caribbean diasporic oral traditions and the gabinetes fonográficos of fin-de-siècle Spain, among others.

Through a process of co-learning, the group of around thirty participants from across the UK addressed the questions: what happens when we own the means of production when it comes to sound? How can we build, exchange and circulate such means today?

RESOLVE sent participants kits for building their own DIY phonographs in the post, in the attempt to collectively capture the materiality of sound and reclaim ownership over its means of production. A mixtape of sounds produced by the participants and assembled by producer Kitty Turner documents the process with all its failures, diversions, joyful manifestations and frustrations.

PARTICIPANTS

Summer Akhtar, Michael Ajijola, Steven Allen, Anja Borowicz-Richardson, Peter Brooks, Rosie Burslem, Mel Davies, Tuna El-salihie, Fe, Oliver Getley, Holly Graham, Clara Hancock, Jenny Handley, Quincy Haynes, Catherine Herbert, Alex Hoggett, Philip Lee, Toby Kilby-Pollard, Mengfei Liu, Olivia Lopez, Katie Matthews, Samra Mayanja, Tyler Mellins, Alisa Oleva, Andy Owen Cook, Lorenzo Prati, Pablo Rubio Alonso, Nastassja Simensky, Ella Skinner, Sian Williams, Charlotte West

Produced by Kitty Turner.

Sound design by Lori E Allen.

Graphic Design by An Endless Supply.