On Air: Samstag, 29.8., 15.00 Uhr — 02.00 Uhr (CET)
auf Radio CORAX 95.9 in Halle (Saale) und im Live-Stream: radiocorax.de

15:00 Sol Rezza “All ears: mapping the city acoustically”

16:30 André Damião “Mobile Music: collective noise and the public”

18:30 Hardi Kurda “Everything Illegal: the urgency to listen to the fringes of legality”

22:00 Sara Hamdy “Margins for Madness: an imaginary garden as radio space”

22:00 Claire Serres “Raven Voices: discovering the voice in on-air-space”

Photo: Mobile Music Performance No. 3, André Damião & Noise Crowd / credits: Thies Streifinger

Also for the final performance in the framework of his residency at Radio Corax, Hardi Kurda collected individual stories about illegal actions and experiences with illegality. Based on conversations with the experimental Cellist Khabat Abas, the performance artist Sherko Abbas and an anonymous voice, as well as on the basis of his own experiences, the composer created a score for voice and radiola springs — a viola prepared with springs and radios that the artist plays himself. The vocal part is performed by the soprano and voice performer Nina Guo. For the interpretation of the score the performers met on air for a “telepathic” live performance on Radio Corax 95.9.

“Everything Illegal” Live Radio Performance /  June 7, 2020
with Hardi Kurda, Radiola Springs & Nina Guo, voice
and the narrations of: Khabat Abas, Sherko Abbas, Hardi Kurda & an anonymous voice

Conversation with Hardi Kurda on illegality and his radio project “Listening’s Urgency”

The recorded voices and narrations were the basis for a one hour live radio performance with a six-member radio ensemble which came together on Radio Corax on April 26, 2020. For the radio art network Radia.fm Kurda made an edited version of the live radio performance which will be aired this week in twenty stations throughout Europe and beyond:

Radia Show 790: Listening’s Urgency by Hardi Kurda (Radio Corax)

Listening’s Urgency – live radio performance by Hardi Kurda, with: Andre Damiao, live from São Paulo; Maximilian Glass, live from Leipzig; Kamil Korolczuk, live from Berlin; Hardi Kurda, live from London; Soheil Soheili, live from Teheran; Ralf Wendt, live from Halle; and with the voices of: I‑ID from Teheran, Kani Kamil from London, Peshraw Mohammed from Berlin, and Niga Salam from Slemani.

Who decides what is “legal” and what is “illegal”? The rules that control us in everyday life are created by social structures and political power. Can listening open up a space for thinking and reflecting? Can the rules of illegality be questioned by listening? Is listening illegal?

For the beginning of the project Kurda asked radio makers and listeners what illegality means to them. The first interviews resulted in a radio play, which was broadcast live on air on March 11th on Radio CORAX 95.9 and transmitted in the performance space. There the audience was invited to create the sound of the performance and to explore their own listening:

“Listening’s Urgency” installation, performance and radio piece by Hardi Kurda (excerpt)
with: Albert, Jasmin Gittel and Götz Rubisch
as well as with compositions by Hardi Kurda, interpreted by Ensemble Recherché, Freiburg, and improvisations by Khabat Abas, cello, and Hardi Kurda, radio and electronics

Photo: Marcus-Andreas Mohr

I was always looking for a way to make music and feel free at doing so — in the sense that I didn’t want to impose a preconceived idea on time, the exploration of space, or the perception of the environment. And I found this freedom in radio, in the frequencies that are free to be listened to and used.

Kurda will further explore the freedom in the frequency’s intermediary tones during his three-month residency at Radio CORAX. Under the title Listening’s Urgency he aims to develop a radio practice that will be continued in Kurdistan-Iraq, where he grew up and founded a festival for sound art and experimental music in 2017, bringing artistic sound practices into the public sphere. For the opening of his residency, Hardi Kurda invites listeners to participate in an interactive radio performance:

Through interaction, the visitors should find or change different frequencies through interaction. It is important to me that they listen actively, interact with each other and make decisions. Because that’s what radio does for me: it brings people into contact.

Opening Performance “listening’s Urgency”

on Weds, March 11, 6.30 pm
at Blech – Raum für Kunst Halle / Am Steintor 19
& 7 pm on Radio CORAX 95.9

Further reading & listening:

→ Live talk with Hardi Kurda on Radio CORAX 95.9 and online: Sunday, February 16, 8 pm

→ Interview on the program magazine of Radio CORAX (German)

Photo: Hardi Kurda, Space 21 Festival, Erbil 2019; credits: Gailan A. Ismail

Opening broadcast (extract)

The Museum of Plant Animals (Extract)

Sara Hamdy from Cairo is the fourth scholar of the Radio Art Residency. Hamdy graduated in fine in arts at the Helwan University in Cairo. Her poetic artistic practice includes visuals and sound as well as text and performance. What leads her works is the hidden and concealed – this what we cannot see nor hear, but only sense:

Obviously I’m fascinated by what we call ›madness‹. In Arabic ›mad‹ means the hidden, in the sense of concealement. There is something of whose existence we know but we don’t see it, like the unspoken history of memory, like the gardens behind the walls or the woods with their hidden seeds in the earth.

Sara Hamdy, Performance, The Complex Songs, 2016.

For the opening of her residency in Halle (Saale), the artist performs her work The Complex Songs, on the 21st of September as part of the Radio CORAX anniversay celebrations.

Sara Hamdy about her art work and ideas for the Radio Art Residency (40 min.)

Picture: Sara Hamdy

Die Stimmung des Geräuschs by André Damião (35 min.)

The piece was created in the framework of the Radio Art Residency and was broadcast on Radia, a network of radio art stations across Europe and beyond.

No Ravens Left for the Funeral by André Damião (28 min.)

Photo: Tina Klatte

Photo: Tina Klatte