On Air - On Site : 48 Hours of Radio Art

Airing on May 24th 11:00 CEST
Warming Up
Genre: Soundscape Composition
Duration: 15 min
In summer 2019 I was artist-in-residence at one of the few remaining watchtowers in Berlin. My project worked with the structure’s historical and geographical visibility as monument, landmark and tool of surveillance. In 1987 London-based artist John Smith made the work ‘The Black Tower’; a film addressing the appearance of a mysterious object that menacingly stalks the artist across east London. Its process of becoming is facilitated by Smith’s narration encompassing everyday voices that witness the structure’s emergence. The Tower never fully appears in the film, glimpsed, partial and manifesting as hearsay. Reading the work forty years later ‘The Black Tower’ becomes an omen and marker for redevelopment that wields equal power in Berlin and London.

‘Warming Up’ is conceived as an aural response to ‘The Black Tower’. Listenability rather than visibility is used to explore The Watchtower as an historical and contemporary witness. I conducted weeks of sound recordings using contact, coil, binaural, shotgun and omni microphones. The audio-work embraces dualistic East and West German approaches to Hörspiel (radio-plays); combining disembodied and didactic experiences. The work developed in response to an intense relationship with the Tower and the goings-on in Schlesischer Park. The sound-work consists of a number of field-recordings and warming-up exercises to synchronise my voice, body and cadence with the Tower endeavouring to activate dormant sonic potentials.

Featuring:

Adam Knight

Born in Bedford, UK (1982) Adam Knight received an MA in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art in 2007. He is an artist based in London who works across image, sound and installation.
Recent/ upcoming exhibitions and screenings include VHS/DTV, TACO! (2025) Jencksianagram, The Cosmic House (2024); Open Sound: REWIND, Outpost Gallery (2024); About Place – Sound Signatures, Jill Craigie Cinema (2023); Recognising Plants as the Bodies of Gods – The One Minutes, Reykjavík International Film Festival (2023); Our Views of Kensal House, V&A/BFI (2023); Two Estates, Brunswick Centre (2023) and Radiophrenia, Glasgow CCA (2022).In 2023, he was Practitioner in Residence at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

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