Short documentaries and adventures in sound about the colour blue, presented by Josie Long. From a view of the earth from space to an affinity with the ocean.

A Blue Gem Below
Featuring Jessica Meir
Produced by Lauren Armstrong Carter

The Blue of Dover
Featuring Naji Ali
Produced by Hunter Charlton and Ben Tulloh
A version of this story first appeared on the SwimOut podcast

Almost Blue
Featuring Laura Barton

First broadcast 23rd March 2021, BBC Radio 4
Curatorial team: Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S26: Short Cuts: The Blue Of Distance 6/7

TRANSCRIPT: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/transcripts/A_Mother_Tongue_Transcript.pdf

What is the etymology of your being? 

Axel Kacoutié offers a vivid personal essay reflecting on language, bilingualism and the curated gaps they have to navigate in order to access their culture and sense of self.

“Your language is a spell, an invocation speaking you into existence, rediscovering the contours of your morality, the fabric of your race and gender and how you relate to others and the world…”

Featuring the voices of the poet Raymond Antrobus and performance artist Rachel Cheung, Axel weaves together the thoughts of a number of multilingual people - including Derick Armah, Irina Niculescu, Mauricio Loseto, Olivia Melkonian, Radhika Viswanathan and Rosel Jackson Stern - into a reflection on living between languages and finding yourself in the gaps.

Read the transcript with sound captions here: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/transcripts/A_Mother_Tongue_Transcript.pdf

Illustration: Erin Tse

First broadcast 15th November 2021, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Axel Kacoutié

A Mother Tongue

A Reading of Blue Topography a book of  Words and sounds on Blue , body and landscapes by Lindsay Duncanson Including field sounds taken during printing and tracks from accompanying album 'Animal Wife' plus remixes and re-imagings from Cath Tyler, Mariam Rezaei and Jayne Dent ( MelostMe) 

Originally Streamed on  Star and Shadow Radio .
To buy the original book format head to https://linktr.ee/pinnel 

 Funded  by Arts Council England

Blue Topography

Ghost Structures

Once Upon a Time

A memoryscape of fatherhood woven between three generations.

from the Fatherhood Short Cuts episode produced by Axel. Series 33.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hfc2

full episode

Short Cuts: Are You Here? by Axel Kacoutié

Us and them is a thought-provoking exhibition of specially-commissioned work in a collaboration between award-winning portrait and social documentary photographer Emma Brown, and disabled artists from Freewheelers Theatre and Media Company, and Kings College London. Oral history and audio production support is being provided by On the Record.

The Freewheelers have co-created portraits exploring visual representations of physical disability and mental illness in Surrey, past and present. The portraits have been created using a traditional Victorian ‘tintype’ technique, which creates a photographic image on a thin sheet of coated metal.

The Us and Them artwork has been inspired by reviewing nineteenth-century archive photographs of patients taken on admission to the ‘Epsom Cluster’ of psychiatric hospitals. The hospitals also housed people with learning disabilities, epilepsy and Down’s Syndrome, which were classified in the same way as mental illness at that time.

The new portraits are provocatively paired with the original Victorian photographs, to provoke public conversations about discrimination and how disability is understood, especially through visual representations.

This striking new collection of images highlights the diversity of disabled artists, celebrates commonality, and unsettles the differences between ‘Us and Them’.

Us and Them has been supported by Surrey History Centre and with funding from King’s College London.

'Us And Them' - an audio documentary

Audio recorded and produced by Laura Khan Mitchison
Co-production and sound design by Steve Urquhart
Photo credit: © Tim Green a.k.a Flamenco Sun
Music: Revbejelde & Howlround

Brompton Cemetery Sound and Stories

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the writer, critic, and author, Merve Emre.

Currently the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University – and the Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism – Emre is also the acclaimed and award-winning author of numerous books. These include Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America; The Personality Brokers (selected as one of the best books of 2018 by the New York Times, and others); The Ferrante Letters (winner of the 2021 PROSE award for literature). A holder of prizes in Literary Criticism, Emre is also a contributing writer to The New Yorker, where she has written extensively on art and literature, from Leonora Carrington to Susan Sontag. 

But! The reason why we are speaking to Emre today is because she is also an ardent expert on Virginia Woolf and the wider Bloomsbury Group, having authored the stunningly beautiful – and informative – The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway, a book that brings alive Woolf’s life and words, and contextualises the radical and pioneering lives of those in the Bloomsbury Group in the most effervescent ways. 

So today on the podcast, we are going to be discussing the sisters at the centre of this movement: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, women who were born into a Victorian society in London but who broke free of all traditions, who formed languages, both artistic and literary, that paved the way of modernism and modernist thinking in the UK and beyond. We are going to be delving into their life and work: looking at how they informed each other and visualised or put into words the world from their distinct and radical perspectives.

Merve's book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-annotated-mrs-dalloway/merve-emre/virginia-woolf/9781631496769

Charleston Trust: https://www.charleston.org.uk/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw99e4BhDiARIsAISE7P857bJ_t36EZCN2JGBsJDUlVSxga42Bmq66SzIuCslkje6DXQsi94AaAmYZEALw_wcB

Mrs Dalloway's Party: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/05/discovered-a-lost-possible-inspiration-for-virginia-woolfs-mrs-dalloway

--

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Merve Erme on Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf

an extract from track 1 of 'portable music (three scores)' by Jez riley French

(nb. duration and frequencies inaudible on computer speakers are elemental aspects of this release - please listen via headphones or conventional speakers)

now available on Touch music's Touchline series:

http://www.touch33.net/touchline/jez_riley_french_1.html

Score For A Footbridge (extract)

Earshot Series is an ongoing project using recordings of the human body to look at our tolerance levels of one another and the sounds we make.

Harmonic Yawns

We generally think about dance as being something you go and see, but iele paloumpis and their collaborators have developed an approach to audio description for dance that goes way beyond the verbal version of the visual that is traditional for AD for live performance. 

This piece interrogates how a holistic approach to AD can transform the audience experience for everyone, and how access can be artform in and of itself. 


Produced by Jess Shane in collaboration with iele paloumpis, Seta Morton, Krishna Washburn, and Alejandra Ospina. 
Music for this piece was composed by Dan Pencer. 

This piece first aired on BBC Short Cuts in their episode The Interpreter. Listen here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000pfgd

***
This research exploring audio description for dance improvisation was catalyzed by the evening-length dance performance of In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky, which was set to premiere at Danspace Project in May 2020, but has been postponed due to COVID-19. It was directed by iele paloumpis in collaboration with Marielys Burgos-Meléndez, Seta Morton, Alejandra Ospina, Monica Rodriguez, Ogemdi Ude, Krishna Washburn, Adrien Weibgen and Marýa Wethers. For more information, please visit inplaceofcatastrophe.com

This project is made possible, in part, by the Danspace Project Commissioning Initiative and Production Residency Program funded by the Lambent Foundation Fund of the Tides Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; with additional support through a 2019 Movement Research Residency, funded by the Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund; and is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC); as well as Dance/NYC's Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellowship Program, made possible by the generous support of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs CreateNYC Disability Forward Fund and the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and with additional support from the New York Community Trust. Creative developmental residencies at The Chocolate Factory Theater, Queer|Art Pride at Abrons Arts Center, AUNTS Residency at Mount Tremper Arts, and the Zil Culture Center in Moscow through the GPS/Global Practice Sharing program of Movement Research with funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, have also contributed to this ongoing research.

***

Image Description: Performer, Krishna Washburn, dances in Saint Mark's Church during a 2019 rehearsal of iele paloumpis's "In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky". Krishna's back is to the camera, her long black braid drapes down her back. Her arms are extended wide, with fingertips curving upward to create a bowl-like shape, conveying something akin to victory, presentation, pride or praise. A balcony, arched windows and ornate columns can be seen in the background.    Photo Credit for "Krishna at St Marks": Izzy Devine-Carter

'Us And Them' - an audio documentary

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