Radio Level Five in Conversation With

Eternal City by Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence is a sonic exploration of an imagined downtown area located between Bregenz, Austria and Dallas, Texas. The piece was created especially for "Sceneries not songs" on Radio Orsimanirana curated by Parasite 2.0 and Antropofago Productions.

Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence is the collaborative practice of artists Chris Dreier (DE) and Gary Farrelly (IRE/BE). The work is fueled by recurring obsessions with architecture, infrastructure, conspiracy theory and institutional power. Their monthly radio show is transmitted on Dublin Digital Radio and Cashmere Radio, Berlin. Their work has been presented at AAIR Antwerpen, Damien and the Love Guru, Laura Mars Gallery, Grölle Pass Projects, Gold and Beton and Marres House for Contemporary Culture (Maastricht).

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

Laszlo Umbreit and Eitan Eifrat are Rhh: a band that mixes live recordings, electronic instruments and acoustic drums. Rhh released an LP last month titled Seemingly Still. The album was made in collaboration with Sirah Foighel Brutmann and was released by audioMER and Argos, Brussels. The release concert took place in Kiosk Radio in Brussels. The duo gives an introduction to their practice and play the recording of their live concert. For more music from Rhh and information about the LP please visit rhhband.bandcamp.com

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

In his meticulous and dense paintings, Jannis Marwitz confronts us with scenes – or entries to narrations – packed with figures and details. What we see evokes echoes of traditional paintings and symbols as well as of contemporary visual gleams, such as referencing to objects of nowadays. In an intriguing way, these echoes occur in the painting gestures, in the choices of content and compositions, but also correspond within Marwitz’ own body of work: figures, objects, and sometimes entire sceneries reappear, with slight changes in detail or colour, recall our memory of what we have seen, what we might be able to comprehend out of the story of his practice as a whole. In the interview we talk with him about his path from abstract to figurative, about influences of the past and today, about visual assemblages, techniques, colour and light.

Jannis Marwitz’ exhibition „The Raid“ at Galerie Barbara Weiss in Berlin runs from April 30 to June 12, 2021.

Interviewed by Batsheva Ross and Olaf Winkler.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

Balancing on the ridge between craft and concept, between material research and figurative depiction, between function and autonomy, Veerle Melis explores the facets, methods and underlying systematics of art fuelled by textile resources and their characteristics. In her work, what started with knotting and weaving of tapestry has opened a broad range of techniques and expressions that have started to literally claim more space. In our conversation we talk with her about the relevance of the process, the meaning of making this process visible, the archeology of cultural traditions, and the openness of the (unfinished?) shape.

Interviewed by Bas van den Hout and Olaf Winkler.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

To mark the 73rd anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel that was celebrated in Israel this Thursday, we were invited by Israeli activist Eitan Bronstein to a special action in front of the Israeli Embassy in Brussels. In an interview, Bronstein spoke to us about his career as a post-Zionist activist whose organisation Zochrot brought the word "Nakba" — The Palestinian disaster of 1947/48 — into Israeli-Hebrew discourse and awareness, about the entanglement between the Nakba and the Israeli independence, about creating alliances, unlearning history and, by doing so, getting closer to where one comes from.

For more information turn to the website www.zochrot.org of Zochrot, the organisation Bronstein founded in 2001, and the website www.de-colonizer.org of De-colonizer, his current project in collaboration with his partner Feminist activist Eléonore Merza, including information on the book titled Nakba (in Hebrew and French, soon in English) https://www.de-colonizer.org/notre-livre-fr

Interviewed by Eitan Efrat.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

‘The 25th of January 2011 was the most special day of my life. It was a moment when life froze, and it was only about the present moment. An overwhelming moment of glory and excitement. A day that all my ideal concepts and abstract beliefs were represented in reality and had form, sound, texture, and smell.’

The 25th of January 2011 was the first of 18 days that changed power relations in Egypt. Omar Kashmiry, living in Cairo as an architecture student at the time, took part in the demonstrations around Tahrir Square that were a decisive step in what we now know as the Arab Spring. In a very personal conversation he talks about his experiences, perceptions and motivations, about how incidents become a chain of events, about home, media, and the notion of the collective.

Interviewed by Bas van den Hout and Olaf Winkler.

Photo: Ezz Monem

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

Bas Blaasse tried to write the perfect cover letter to be done with it once and for all. But how do you maintain a balance between what you want and what you think others want from you?

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

Perri MacKenzie discusses her essay "The Stakes are a Thick Vision, Images of Women Gambling in Eliot and de la Tour" published in the first issue of Le Chauffage.

Le Chauffage (french for "The Heater") is an artist-run magazine based in Brussels. Conceived as a cross-continental community-oriented platform, Le Chauffage brings together the work and writing of artists / friends from different cities with the intent to spark discussions and fuel casual forms of critical discourse.

Le Chauffage is edited by Emile Rubino, Felix Rapp, Francesca Percival.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

La Galerie Louise

An artist statement, a novella, a confession

2015-2020

Written by Batsheva Ross

Read by Ella de Burca

Text editors:

Perri Mackenzie

Liz Allen

sound editor:

Marco Lampis

The following recording is the 7th chapter and Epilogue of La Galerie Louise, an audiobook based on a novella written by Batsheva Ross between 2015 and 2020. The full novella includes seven chapters and an epilogue.

In a period in which she was agonising over writing artist applications, Ross felt she was facing an artistic crisis in her practice. She distracted herself by writing a memoir about her side job as an aggressive salesclerk for Dead Sea cosmetics. This side job wasn't something she was particularly proud of. Although it demanded her intellectual talents and skills, it also required applying some devious personality traits that, at times, felt morally questionable to her. Moreover, it gave her the feeling of getting off track from her own art practice by being too invested in something so detached from the art world. She felt the necessity of defending herself, and the memoir served simultaneously as a written confession. But in taking up this task, she came to see the complicated reality of her daily life as a compassionate marriage between two worlds—the art world and the merchandise world. An alliance that left her appeased with both. She began to see her side job as a crucial part of her artist trajectory, if not even her actual artistic practice.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

La Galerie Louise

An artist statement, a novella, a confession

2015-2020

Written by Batsheva Ross

Read by Ella de Burca

Text editors:

Perri Mackenzie

Liz Allen

sound editor:

Marco Lampis

The following recording is the 6th chapter of La Galerie Louise, an audiobook based on a novella written by Batsheva Ross between 2015 and 2020. The full novella includes seven chapters and an epilogue.

In a period in which she was agonising over writing artist applications, Ross felt she was facing an artistic crisis in her practice. She distracted herself by writing a memoir about her side job as an aggressive salesclerk for Dead Sea cosmetics. This side job wasn't something she was particularly proud of. Although it demanded her intellectual talents and skills, it also required applying some devious personality traits that, at times, felt morally questionable to her. Moreover, it gave her the feeling of getting off track from her own art practice by being too invested in something so detached from the art world. She felt the necessity of defending herself, and the memoir served simultaneously as a written confession. But in taking up this task, she came to see the complicated reality of her daily life as a compassionate marriage between two worlds—the art world and the merchandise world. An alliance that left her appeased with both. She began to see her side job as a crucial part of her artist trajectory, if not even her actual artistic practice.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels