Static Range is a multi-disciplinary and multi-limbed project using a real-life spy-story in the Indian Himalayas as a canvas for speculations and reflections about nuclear culture, porosity, leakages, toxicity and love, spiritual-scientific entanglements, environmental catastrophe and post-nation states. This series of transmissions that make up 'static range', include an animated stamp, letters, music, embroidery, healing, planting and a performance installation.

Nanda Devi, meaning the goddess of happiness, is the patron mountain of the Indian Himalayas. During the cold war in 1965, the CIA collaborated with the Indian Intelligence Bureau to site a nuclear-powered surveillance device on the mountain to intercept Chinese nuclear missile data. The mountain goddess, a temperamental revolutionary, whipped up an immense tempest, and the expedition had to turn back. The plutonium powered device was stashed on the mountain with the intention of recovering it the following season, however it has yet to be found, and “could still be ticking somewhere”.

In 1978, during the two years the sanctuary was reopened, my father, a mountaineer, went on an expedition to climb Dunagiri. From there, they took a photograph of Nanda Devi, which was made into a postage stamp by the Indian Telegraph services.

Using the conceit of the stamp, Static Range begins with a toxic love-letter from the spy device to the mountain. What did the spy device see?

Following the work’s underlying theme of transmission and interception, the letter was written in English and translated into Hindi, German, Hebrew and Arabic. It will continue to do so as it seeps through the world. These pieces, read for radio, and interspersed with Nagada drums inspired by the Uighur region that the device overlooked, are read by each of its translators, in an effort to air the codes and crossings of the nuclear and those human and non human voices that have been silenced because of it.

Himali is a writer and artist based between London and Delhi. She uses metaphors from outer space and the natural environment to construct imaginary cosmologies of interferences, entanglements, deep voids, debris, delays, alienation, distance and intimacy.

Static Range was commissioned as part of Right on Time Radio which ran from 4-13 June 2021.

Curated by Soukaina Aboulaoula for Sheffield DocFest Arts Programme 2021.

https://www.himalisinghsoin.com/

Right on Time Radio - Static Range by Himali Singh Soin

Sundown Conversations, hosted by Yasmine Benabdallah and Karim Kattan, was a daily half- hour radio show which was broadcast live on Sheffield DocFest's Right on Time Radio from June 7 to June 13, at 3:30pm BST.

With sunset right around the corner, the hosts discuss how an awareness of time affects their practice, and invite other artists to share in the discussion. A moment of in-betweenness, shifting lights, and generative bewilderment, twilight is posited as an ideal pause to take stock of our relationship to time, as humans and as artists.

Each session explores one aspect of embodied time as practice, counter-tool, or strategy: from losing time and hearing time to healing time and reclaiming time. Sundown Conversations is an invitation to enter a space of repose and reflection, in intimate and informal conversation.

Karim Kattan is a writer and doctor of literature. His books include a collection of short stories, Préliminaires pour un verger futur (2017), and a novel, Le Palais des deux collines (2021). His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Strange Horizons, The Maine Review, +972 Magazine, The Funambulist, and more.

Yasmine Benabdallah is a filmmaker and visual artist whose work includes The Travel Curiosity (2016), Ojalá: la vuelta al origen (2018), and Its people, its sky, its scent (2018). Yasmine explores stories around memory, dance, archive, and rituals. Her work has shown in Morocco, France, Egypt, the US, and Palestine.

Sundown Conversations was commissioned as part of Right on Time Radio which ran from 4-13 June 2021.

Curated by Soukaina Aboulaoula for Sheffield DocFest Arts Programme 2021.

Right on Time Radio - Sundown Conversations by Yasmine Benabdallah and Karim Kattan

What happens when we shift attention from the artwork to the people for whom art is their work? A Rest Guide for a Tired Nigerian Artist is the first step in this exploration.

Travel. Cook and eat. Dance—preferably naked. Drink the rain. Talk to other artists. Or avoid other artists. These are some examples of the advice from five Nigerian artists on how to find peace in a troubled world. They each deliver ten tips in a Rest Guide, an illustrated, printed guidebook. In podcasts, the artists discuss their lives and art practices.

The Rest Guide series that the collective is now publishing is the first step in an exploration of what happens when we shift attention from the artwork to the people for whom art is their work.

A Rest Guide for a Tired Nigerian Artist

Hidden under our feet is an information highway made of fungi that allows plants to communicate and support each other. Ebony Hoorn has adapted the practice of Yoga Nidra to create a guided meditation that explores the perspective of the Mycelium Network and its fruiting body, the Mushroom. Aiming to increase the listeners empathy with more-than-human worlds and recognise our interconnectedness with the rest of nature, we will explore the unseen through our consciousness. This practice draws our attention inwards, in effect using our senses as a microscope to visualise, listen and become one with the unseen world.

The Fungal Dirt Web by Ebony Hoorn

Put a strawberry to your lips. Bite it. Hear the skin rip. Taste the sweetness on your tongue. But where has it come from?

This audio-essay by Jessica El Mal explores the ethics of strawberries, one of the staples of British summer time, and their cultivation in Huelva, southern Spain. Taking a sensory ethnographic approach, speaking with activists, engaging with found sound and linking with academic texts will open up questions of feminism, ecology and food rights. 

With thanks to Jornales en Huelva en Lucha
Sound design Marlon Morris
Spanish translation by Hannah Maria Owen

Forbidden Fruits By Jessica El Mal

Static Range is a multi-disciplinary and multi-limbed project using a real-life spy-story in the Indian Himalayas as a canvas for speculations and reflections about nuclear culture, porosity, leakages, toxicity and love, spiritual-scientific entanglements, environmental catastrophe and post-nation states. This series of transmissions that make up 'static range', include an animated stamp, letters, music, embroidery, healing, planting and a performance installation.

Nanda Devi, meaning the goddess of happiness, is the patron mountain of the Indian Himalayas. During the cold war in 1965, the CIA collaborated with the Indian Intelligence Bureau to site a nuclear-powered surveillance device on the mountain to intercept Chinese nuclear missile data. The mountain goddess, a temperamental revolutionary, whipped up an immense tempest, and the expedition had to turn back. The plutonium powered device was stashed on the mountain with the intention of recovering it the following season, however it has yet to be found, and “could still be ticking somewhere”.

In 1978, during the two years the sanctuary was reopened, my father, a mountaineer, went on an expedition to climb Dunagiri. From there, they took a photograph of Nanda Devi, which was made into a postage stamp by the Indian Telegraph services.

Using the conceit of the stamp, Static Range begins with a toxic love-letter from the spy device to the mountain. What did the spy device see?

Following the work’s underlying theme of transmission and interception, the letter was written in English and translated into Hindi, German, Hebrew and Arabic. It will continue to do so as it seeps through the world. These pieces, read for radio, and interspersed with Nagada drums inspired by the Uighur region that the device overlooked, are read by each of its translators, in an effort to air the codes and crossings of the nuclear and those human and non human voices that have been silenced because of it.

Himali is a writer and artist based between London and Delhi. She uses metaphors from outer space and the natural environment to construct imaginary cosmologies of interferences, entanglements, deep voids, debris, delays, alienation, distance and intimacy.

Static Range was commissioned as part of Right on Time Radio which ran from 4-13 June 2021.

Curated by Soukaina Aboulaoula for Sheffield DocFest Arts Programme 2021.

Static Range - Hindi Translation by Shveta Sarda

Static Range - German Translation by Ulrike Almut Sandig

Static Range- Lithuanian Translation by Eglė Naujokaitytė

Static Range - English

Sundown Conversations, hosted by Yasmine Benabdallah and Karim Kattan, was a daily half- hour radio show which was broadcast live on Sheffield DocFest's Right on Time Radio from June 7 to June 13, at 3:30pm BST.

With sunset right around the corner, the hosts discuss how an awareness of time affects their practice, and invite other artists to share in the discussion. A moment of in-betweenness, shifting lights, and generative bewilderment, twilight is posited as an ideal pause to take stock of our relationship to time, as humans and as artists.

Each session explores one aspect of embodied time as practice, counter-tool, or strategy: from losing time and hearing time to healing time and reclaiming time. Sundown Conversations is an invitation to enter a space of repose and reflection, in intimate and
informal conversation.

Karim Kattan is a writer and doctor of literature. His books include a collection of short stories, Préliminaires pour un verger futur (2017), and a novel, Le Palais des deux collines (2021). His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Strange Horizons, The Maine Review, +972 Magazine, The Funambulist, and more.

Yasmine Benabdallah is a filmmaker and visual artist whose work includes The Travel Curiosity (2016), Ojalá: la vuelta al origen (2018), and Its people, its sky, its scent (2018). Yasmine explores stories around memory, dance, archive, and rituals. Her work has shown in Morocco, France, Egypt, the US, and Palestine.

Sundown Conversations was commissioned as part of Right on Time Radio which ran from 4-13 June 2021.

Curated by Soukaina Aboulaoula for Sheffield DocFest Arts Programme 2021.

Sundown Conversations, Yasmine Benabdallah and Karim Kattan - June 11 2021

Sundown Conversations, Yasmine Benabdallah and Karim Kattan - June 10 2021

Sundown Conversations, Yasmine Benabdallah and Karim Kattan - June 9 2021

Sundown Conversations, Yasmine Benabdallah and Karim Kattan - June 8 2021

Sundown Conversations, Yasmine Benabdallah and Karim Kattan - June 7 2021

By this time last year, the world was closing off. Morocco was one of the first countries to barricade its borders. We didn’t understand the extent of it and let’s be honest, we still don’t. 

All over the world, levels of anxiety got higher and higher. But I like to believe that, in a way, this difficult moment allowed us all, some kind of growth.	
			
Make Time is a podcast about how COVID-19 and lockdown changed my relationship to time, how it changed my friends' perception of time. How it motivated some and paralyzed others. How it gave us all, some perspective. My name is Layal and this is me, genuinely trying

Lesbonnesondes.ma is an online media that creates, produces and hosts audio reports, documentaries and talk shows. Carried by the voices of journalists, activists and artists Lesbonnesondes.ma is a collaborative project and open space. 

Layal Rhanem is an independent radio host and producer. With a background in Journalism, communication and marketing, Layal has been been co-hosting from 2012 to 2019 Culture Pop, a morrocan radio talk show about arts and culture.

Make Time was commissioned as part of Right on Time Radio which ran from 4-13 June 2021.

Curated by Soukaina Aboulaoula for Sheffield DocFest Arts Programme 2021. 

https://www.lesbonnesondes.ma/
https://soundcloud.com/layal-rhanem
https://soundcloud.com/lesbonnesondes

Right on Time Radio - Make Time: Another Lockdown Story by Layal Rhanem for Les Bonnes Ondes

With Sona Jobarteh, Fatou Kiné Diouf, Binta Diaw and Adama Diongue, Fatou Kiné Ndiaye, Binel Mboum, Imann Gaye, Black Yaye Fall, Aminata Fall, Mamy Victory, Yandé Codou Sène, Mareme Niang and the whales singing. Sonic assemblage by Jasmina Al-Qaisi.  

Trans-temporal Echoes brings in resonance voices, sounds, and rhythms across time. Traversing stories of precolonial West Africa, contemporary urban life, and cross-culturally generated constellations of knowledges it calls into question hegemonic conceptions of linear time and the past. Turning toward embodied forms of knowing it amplifies moment of trans-generational transmission unsettling linear temporality and spatial separation.

Trans-temporal Echoes is an ensemble of voices, a distant dialogue amongst women and whales echoing each other telling a story of deep entanglements, deep time, residence time, a tale of water and fluid time.

Submersed in a fictional oceanscape populated by whales, vibrating with Sona Jobarteh, multi-instrumentalist and composer, descendant of one of the five principal kora-playing griot families of West Africa, listening to curator Fatou Kiné Diouf channelling Djibril Diop Mambéty, echoing artist Binta Diaw and her mother Adama Diongue chanting the mourning of Baay Demba Waar, healing with artist Fatou Kiné Ndiaye invoking her mother, resonating with griotte Binel Mboum singing Yéla [granted wishes], music of the Toucouleurs created in Fouta-Toro, wandering with artist Imann Gaye and Akinbode Akinbiyi’s words, naming genealogies with slammer Black Yaye Fall, following soul singer Aminata Fall laughing in Touki Bouki, intercepting rapper Mamy Victory riming of self-determination, tracing time with Chiara Figone calling upon Jacqui Alexander and Dionne Brand, choring with Yandé Codou Sène in a Serer ritual, breathing with Mareme Niang.

Trans-Temporal Echoes was commissioned as part of Right on Time Radio which ran from 4-13 June 2021.

Curated by Soukaina Aboulaoula for Sheffield DocFest Arts Programme 2021.

https://www.radio-awu.org/

Right on Time Radio - Trans-Temporal Echoes by AWU Radio

Olatunde Alara is a self-taught multimedia, visual artist based in Lagos, Nigeria. His works are driven by a DIY ethic. Drawing from a range of influences which include graffiti, elements of street art, contemporary art, abstract art, and experimental art, Olatunde Alara has an interest in challenging the conservative attitudes of a Lagos art scene still bound by respectability politics and profit. He uses media such as drawing, performance art, site-specific installations, collages, and public art, to recenter critical thought as an important aspect of art-making in Nigeria.

In this episode, he speaks about the unreasonable demands of capitalism on the artist, who gets to truly rest in such systems, and how intersectional feminism is the foundation for any pathway to true rest.

A Rest Guide For A Tired Nigerian Artist Podcast - Olatunde Alara

Jerry Buhari is an artist, curator and professor of fine art at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. His work, sometimes serial in pursuit, often experiments with non-traditional materials and processes. His abstract works are known for their vibrant use of colour to convey intensity and emotion. His abstract language is used as a vehicle to explore larger political and social themes.

In addition to his professorship at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, In 2019, he curated Arthouse’s long-deserved exhibition of the Zaria Art Society. He also served as chairman of the Visual Arts National Arts Festival (NAFEST) in 2012 and Consultant to the Central Bank of Nigeria Currency Notes Museum.

In this episode, he speaks about his journey into academia, the state of art education in Nigeria, and the role of the artist in society.

A Rest Guide For A Tired Nigerian Artist Podcast - Jerry Buhari

Halima Abubakar Idirisu is a Nigerian photographer, researcher, archivist and artist with a particular interest in the conservation and preservation of historical and cultural heritage. Through her long-term projects, Halima aims to question her surrounding environment by depicting her life experiences. Using a combination of colour, texture, patterns, and symbolism—she uses a conceptual approach to the visual narratives she weaves, often through the form of self-portraiture combined with expressionism and diarist styles.

In this episode, she speaks about her journey into the arts after she turned away from pressure to become a medical doctor, and saved up her National Youth Service allowance to buy her first camera.

A Rest Guide For A Tired Nigerian Artist Podcast - Halima Abubakar Idrisu

Ayodele Olofintuade is a queer, non-binary black feminist. She is the author of Lakiriboto Chronicles: A Brief History of Badly Behaved Women (2018) and Eno’s Story(2010) - shortlisted for the NLNG Prize in 2011. Her short stories and essays have been published in several literary journals, her latest essay is Lost In Translation(ByTruly.co). She is an investigative journalist/researcher and is presently focused on Yoruba women in Ifa and pre-colonial histories. She’s been running an online Feminist and Queer ezine, 9jafeminista since 2012.

In this episode, Ayodele speaks about navigating societal expectations, exploring the concept of ‘work’ beyond its role as social capital, and balancing energies.

A Rest Guide For A Tired Nigerian Artist Podcast - Ayodele Olofintuade

Amanda Iheme is an architecture photographer and psychotherapist living and working in Lagos, Nigeria. She studied at the University of Cape Coast for a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and received a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology from Swansea University. She currently runs her private practice called Ndidi while working as an artist.

In this episode Amanda Iheme speaks about her refusal to succumb to a victim mentality, knowing when to show up as a therapist not an artist, the anxiety of working and travelling with the rising insecurity and how to call BS from a mile away.

A Rest Guide For A Tired Nigerian Artist Podcast - Amanda Iheme

Sheffield Doc/Fest were absolutely thrilled to welcome world-renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough to the Festival for the first time in 2016. Long established as the world’s leading natural history documentarian and presenter, Sir David’s long and celebrated career has also included the highest-level work off screen, as Controller of BBC2, and Director of Programmes across the BBC. He has been responsible for commissioning many innovative titles over the years, including the 13 part documentary television series The Ascent of Man. In 1966 he oversaw the introduction of colour television to Britain and in 1969 was responsible for clearing the BBC schedule for the moon landing.

Sir David discussed his long and illustrious career and talked about the future of television and media with Charlotte Moore, Controller of Channels and iPlayer for the BBC.

Supported by BBC

Sir David Attenborough

We celebrate, champion and debate documentary film and art as a collective form of engagement.

Sheffield DocFest

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