On Air - On Site : 48 Hours of Radio Art

Aired on May 24th 18:30 CEST 2025
When We Bow Down Our Heads
Genre: Radio Drama
Duration: 60 min
Part One: Wind Over Water 00:00
Part Two: Wind Over land(s) 20:00
Part Three: Wind Over Bodies 40:00
This is the first in a series of wind-works and is constructed from field recordings spanning 10 years. The swirling together of locations in the three 20-minute movements emulate the promiscuous borderlessness of wind as it whispers and gusts across water, land, structures and bodies. Face it, the wind doesn’t care about your nations.
The title is adapted from Christina Rosetti’s poem “Who Has Seen The Wind” and reimagines her short verses from the perspective of the trees themselves, that bow, not in subjugation, but in resiliency.
Future additions of the series will include the voices of people that have a particular connection to wind, for example: an illustrator focused on climate, a Diné artist that weaves wind into his works, a woman born in the windiest state in America, a low vision designer that creates sensory textiles, and a scientist that studies wind currents.
When We Bow Down Our Heads includes recordings from:
Accord, NY, USA ★ Agate Beach, CA, USA ★ Brooklyn Army terminal, NY, USA ★ Casco Bay, ME, USA ★ Clear Lake, CA, USA Deer Mountain CO, USA ★ Four Corners, AZ/UT/CO/MM, USA ★ Jackson, WY, USA ★ Jamaica Bay, NY, USA ★ Kefalonia, GREECE ★ Mabul Island, BORNEO ★ Manhattan - Pier 6, NY, USA ★ Ridgewood, Queens, NY ★ Robert Moses State Park, NY, USA ★ Zion National Park, UT, USA

Aired on May 25th 18:30 CEST 2025
Frozen Words
Genre: Radio Drama
Duration: 15 min
“Don’t be afraid. This is the edge of the frozen sea, and at the beginning of the last winter there was a great and bloody battle. The shouts of the men, the cries of the women, the slashing of the battle-axes and all the other frightful noises of battle became frozen on the air. But just now, the rigours of winter being over and the good season coming on with its calm and mild weather, these noises are melting, and so you can hear them.”
François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantegruel
We are on a sailing vessel along with a giant named Pantagruel, his companions, and his crew. We hear the waves, the seagulls, the ship’s hull cutting through the ice, and the voyagers eating a meal on deck. And then comes the disembodied bombast. In this fabulation however, the cacophony of 16th century warfare is invaded by terrible sounds from more recent days.
Rabelais’ phantasmagoric prophecy of the explosive reanimation of language, suggests that words can return to haunt us. We are living the full realization of this now as we are tossed on a sea of hate speech propagated by the highest office in the land. Where do these abominable phrases go once they are unleashed into the media? Who is responsible for their meaning? How long will their influence linger?

This is a new binaural mix of a multichannel work originally created in 2019.
Credits:
Voices: Matt Rohrer, Ben Wright, Ken Marks
Music arranged by Jason Glasser (lyrics by Francois Rabelais)
Additional mastering by Quentin Chiapetta at MediaNoise

Featuring:

John Roach

John Roach is a US artist and educator based in Queens New York, whose work is concerned with the often slippery role that sound plays in our perception of the world. His recent projects, that range from works for radio to intermedia installations, have explored the ability of sound to construct immersive portraits of places, and how the careful assembly of spatialized field recordings, sound design elements, and voices can connect a listener to unexpected impressions of a landscape or soundscape. He has had exhibitions and residencies in the US and Internationally.

The 2025 edition will be broadcast online from 8 pm on May 23 to 8 pm on May 25 (CET)