S1 Ep3: Leaky Transmissions #3: Radio Silence

Radio Silence is the third episode of the Leaky Transmissions podcast series. The collaborative audio-work emerged and developed from a poetry workshop led by Emma Bolland, to write experimentally about the spaces, metaphors, and struggles of ‘transmission’. 

In relation to analogue radio, the term ‘static’ is associated with faulty transmission or faulty reception—static is communication gone wrong. But what if ‘static’ is thought of as a rich space, a generative space, where the effort and struggle of communication is valued as a thing in itself? 

In this collaboration, artist Nastassja Simensky, Emma Bolland, Laroche and Gesa Helms explore the politics of ‘radio’ as a means of transmission, communication and interference.

In a series of conversations following the workshop, collaborators shared, translated and responded to individual contributions from audio captioning, scripts, radio static, stutters and the ‘machine silence’ of zoom. This material has then been mixed by Roisner and produced by sound Of ruins into a 12 minute audio-work.

Nastassja Simensky is an artist who often works collaboratively to make writing, place-specific performances, events, sound work and films as a form of ongoing fieldwork. Leaky Transmissions is an ongoing body of artwork and research Nastassja is developing through a PhD at the Slade exploring changing land-use and the potential of collaborative fieldwork involving artists and archaeologists.

Emma Bolland is an artist, writer, and lecturer whose work currently explores pathologisation of language, the spaces of institutions, and the wider politics of communication. Their latest work is a hybrid novella / prose-poem/ screenplay, Instructions from Light, London: JOAN (2023).

Gesa Helms is an artist, researcher and educator. She lives between Glasgow, UK, and rural Northwest Germany. Her artistic work is often site-specific and walking-based in an expanded field of drawing. She is fond of questions and sometimes writes these out too. She holds a PhD in Human Geography (Glasgow, UK). 

Laroche is an artist and writer working from field centres in the French Pyrenees, southern Spain and London UK. They produce art works using performance, installation, sound, moving image and live event to explore a range of metaphysical, sensorial and poetic thematics: ideas on geoecologies and human behaviour; the slippage of perception, distance and materiality in digital technologies; the viewpoints and monuments of collapsing environments. 

They are currently collaborating with AADK performance platform in Spain, and are a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. They founded and coordinate the itinerant artist network TSOEG.org, and co-founded the sonic arts collective SEL__NOIR. 

Roisner is a performance artist, music producer, sound engineer and DJ, working with live event and pre-recorded material. He is currently collaborating with AADK (Centro Negra) in Spain and Al·Darrax Label, an independent space dedicated to publishing sounds from the heart of the Ricote Valley, Murcia. Roisner is part of Abraham Hurtado’s 'The Body in Crisis', work, 'Rota Festival' at Centro Párraga, Murcia and 'Raiz al noise Festival', Blanca.