One Djezz - Djelimandi

FLO - Baby

Field recording at Journal Square PATH Station in Jersey City, NJ. 01092024

FR: Journal Square PATH Station

Ensemble in Ditan Park: people, birds, and the saxophone

Helicopter passing by a Dog Park at Jersey Waterfront

Passenger flows at the subway turnstiles

纺织机械录音-南通大生纱厂智能车间（2023.8.22)

2024_0117_腊八_Manhattan Bridge_to_Mahayana_Temple

Hyde Park2024.1.17

"Soundscapes reveal a lot about how people think and behave." The field recordist and musician talks about listening culture, repatriating African sounds and his new album with The Bug.

Today's conversation moves away from the dance floor, focusing instead on the soft, ambient soundscapes of the Berlin-based musician Joseph Kamaru—AKA KMRU—whose work has been featured at festivals like CTM, Mutek, Atonal, Horst Music and Arts, Dekmantel, and Unsound; concert halls like The Barbican; and major galleries and site-specific installations around the world.

Kamaru moved to Europe from Nairobi, where he first became interested in music production, and field recordings specifically. As a graduate student in the sonic arts, he learned that the majority of the discourse around sound art practices is specific to Western Eurocentric or occidental ways of thinking. He's since embarked on a mission to use field recording as a means of repatriating African identities that are often left out of institutional archives and grapple with the legacy of colonialism.

In this RA Exchange, Kamaru reflects on the sociopolitical angle of his work, and his observation that listening, by its very nature, is never neutral. He also talks about how civilisation and technology has changed our collective listening habits; how sound sources beyond the human hearing range make their way into his work with the use of electromagnetic microphones; and his new album, Disconnect, made with the musician Kevin Richard Martin (AKA The Bug). Listen to the episode in full.

EX.723 KMRU

The Xita neighborhood is the biggest Koreatown in Northeast China. Its market is always crowded and noisy. 

Recorded in the market of Xita Koreatown, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China.
Time: 9:20, April 11, 2025
Recordist: Ou Ning
Recorder: ZOOM H8

The Xita Korean Market

Ou Ning is the director of the documentaries San Yuan Li (2003) and Meishi Street (2006); chief curator of the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (2009); jury member of 8th Benesse Prize at 53rd Venice Biennale (2009); member of the Asian Art Council at the Guggenheim Museum (2011); founding chief editor of the literary journal Chutzpah!(2010-2014); founder of the Bishan Project (2011-2016); a visiting professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (2016-2017); and a senior research fellow of the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research in Boston (2019-2024). His collected writings Utopia in Practice: Bishan Project and Rural Reconstruction is just published by Palgrave Macmillan (2020).

https://columbia.academia.edu/OuNing

The Xita Korean Market

Institute of Sound