Playlist:

The Juicy Part (2019) - Jess Shane

Krabat (2019, InTerjeCtions EP) - Akkamiau

Goa Live set (2018) - Leonie Roessler

One Blanket Lost (2010 short version) - Meira Asher

Jess Shane is a Canadian audio producer based in New York. Her work has aired on programs including the BBC's Short Cuts, WBEZ’s Re:Sound, and CBC’s The Doc Project, Love Me, and Ideas.  She is also the co-founder of Constellations, a collective and podcast for sound art and experimental audio. Jess was a producer on CBC's Personal Best and Mic Drop. Her love of audio was born from her community arts practice, where she collaborated with communities in spaces across Toronto to design collaborative audio-visual celebrations and installations. She is currently pursuing an MFA candidate in Hunter College's Integrated Media Arts program, with a focus on collaborative documentary practices. 

About ‘The Juicy Part’:

I’ve noticed a mounting and disturbing trend in ‘content’ and documentary, whereby makers contextualize their traumatic experiences in terms of traditional narrative arcs, creating suspense, climax, and resolution. In so doing, they position ‘story’ as trauma as opposed to the systems and power structures that enable such trauma to occur. This is not to say I don’t believe that retelling details of trama are not important -- but I feel that retelling them in the context of an uncontrolled broadcast environment, or in terms of entertainment platforms, is very different from recounting them to a loved one or a therapist.

On YouTube, I see this trend in abundance. It’s difficult to generalize because different users us the platform to share stories in different contexts: their words are directed towards various audiences even though they’re available to all. For this piece, I sourced segments of confessional Youtube videos in which this occurs; I often noted a disconnect between people relaying their trauma with sincerity, while also using devices of narrative structure to entice listeners to listen in closer. I am skeptical of the benefit of people commodifying their own stories in this way.

Akkamiau has performed experimental audiovisual shows since 2006. In 2012 she co-founded audiovisual interactive collective StratoFyzika, and has launched and performs live with the latest experimental techno project hiT͟Hərˈto͞o. Akkamiau hosted radio shows at Colaboradio and Cashmere radio and regularly DJs on local techno events in Berlin. 

About ‘Krabat’:

It deals with human sounds, spoken language and its emotional charge, and with a subjective sound environment, in a way of internal sound ecology. It is part of her InTerjeCtions EP from 2019.

Leonie Roessler - Composer and Performer raised in Germany and the US, now based in The Hague, Netherlands. Leonie captures her environment through field recordings, which she uses for radio pieces, sound installations, and compositions for soloists and ensembles. She had recent residencies at New Media Society and Limited Access Festival (Iran), Forum Wallis (Switzerland), and The Story of Space Festival (India), and Berlin Circus Biennale (Germany), and Studio LOOS (Netherlands).

About ‘Goa Live Set’:

This piece was performed live at Helicopter, Den Haag in November of 2018. It is entirely made of field recordings that Leonie recorded in Goa in 2017 during her residency for The Story of Space Festival.

Meira Asher -The research areas of composer, performer and HR activist Meira Asher include Social Documentary and the Amplification of the Human Body.

When living in The Netherlands she was co-founder of the bodylab art foundation in The Hague (2001-2011). Currently she is a lecturer at Haifa University’s Art School, and curator-presenter of the independent Radio Art program radioart106 since 2014, affiliated with the Radia.fm network.

Her recent works include “from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea - a Soundscape of an Occupation” for KUNSTRADIO (Vienna) and a 2LP...