Hosted and supported by Serpentine Projects, Earth Hold organised a day of live broadcasts, listening sessions, and discussion on 28th October 2018 to coincide with the end of Qalandiya International in Palestine.
The event offered an opportunity for Radio Earth Hold to share their research with the public, to reflect on its content and take ideas of dispersed, intangible, radio solidarity into physical, communal space. This event was a prelude to the Serpentine Projects residency programme Radio Ballads.
Radio Earth Hold explored the potential for planetary forms of solidarity, using sound and radio as catalysts and vehicles for supra-national connection.
Radio Earth Hold‘s research traced echoes between the anti-occupation movement in Palestine and anti-racism movements in the North American context. They examined British Mandate radio as a colonial instrument in Palestine; Israeli control of Palestinian telecommunications as part of an architecture of occupation; and the use of radio as a platform for Palestinian resistance. Radio Earth Hold connected these to the birth of Mni Wiconi at Standing Rock, radical midwifery practices and the acousmatics of sound in the womb.
Broadening beyond political struggle to the phenomenon of ‘natural radio’, their research addressed how electromagnetic radiation exists all around us, functioning at a bigger-than-planetary scale. How might natural radio and acousmatic sound — reverb without a cause, or echo without a source — offer a model for reorganising relationships between the individuals and the world? What solidarity emerges from the recognition of our participation in the transmission of planetary sound?
Radio Earth Hold presented a day of collective listening and discussion around these ideas, bringing together artists, writers and musicians working on sound, radio, activism and the planetary. The day navigated engaged political struggle with more macro, theoretical, and poetic perspectives.
Workshops, presentations and conversations with:
- Ultra-red
- Daisy Hildyard
- Sulaiman Majali
- Sophie Dyer
- Louis Moreno and Dhanveer Singh Brar
- Inas Halabi
Radio Earth Hold also took the form of a distributed radio series, with episodes commissioned from artists and writers Inas Halabi, Ravon and Autumn Chacon, Basma al-Sharif and Sky Hopinka, and Ma’an Abu Taleb. These were hosted on Qalandiya International and the Serpentine’s websites, and broadcast through a network of partner radio stations. Radio Earth Hold was commissioned as part of the collateral program of this year’s Palestinian biennial, Qalandiya International IV.
Radio Earth Hold was organised by Rachel Dedman, Laure Selys and Arjuna Neuman.
