Hardi Kurda and his radio project “Listening’s Urgency” have been featured in the “Hörspielmagazin” on Deutschlandfunk.

The Kurdish composer and musician Hardi Kurda discovers the radio as an instrument that challenges our listening and questions the social order. Oscillating freely between the frequencies, he poses the question of illegality and its consequences for people and society.

→ Hardi Kurda: Die Freiheit der Frequenzen / Hörspielmagazin, 28.07.2020

Photo: Gailan A. Ismail

Live-Stream

July 12, 5.30 pm CET: Sound transmission and listening: challenges of the present

Open the discussion around sound transmission, radio and the changes of the listening situation, with: Anna Bromley, Roberto Paci Dalo, Eleftherios Krysalis, Hardi Kurda, prof. Nathalie Singer and prof. Christiane Voss

July 13, 3 pm CET: Everything Illegal on shift.fm

shift.fm presents the radio performance “Everything Illegal” by Hardi Kurda and Nina Guo

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”

Illegality is awareness of a movement which doesn’t have a voice, which is not recognized, which is not normal. Illegality provocates and askes for something to change.

For the final performance as part of the Radio Art Residency, Kurda meets the soprano and voice performer Nina Guo for a telepathic live radio performance that invites listeners to follow them into the fringe areas of social order. What emerges is a radiophonic narration that draws on personal experiences from these marginal areas. It is based on conversations with the cellist Khabat Abas, the performance artist Sherko Abbas and a former smuggler, who have shared their stories with us, as well as on Kurdas own story.

Sunday, June 7, 8 pm
on Radio CORAX 95.9 Mhz in Halle
and via live-stream on RADIOCORAX.DE
as well as on reboot.fm / 88.4 MHz in Berlin

The live radio performance will be relayed by the radio festival Latitude on Air: Unsettling Power Relations.

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.

In this, Kurda is searching for the in-between sounds of the medium and the gaps in the social order: Do we overstep the borders of legality by listening? What does illegality mean? Can illegality make noise? Is noise illegal?
A live radio ensemble of musicians, artists and writers from different parts of the world pursue these questions in Kurdas piece. The radio listeners are invited to follow them and to reflect their own listening.

In the course of the performance we invite you to share your listening impressions via chat.

Tune in:
Listening’s Urgency – Live Radio Performance

with: André Damião, Maximilian Glass, I‑ID, Peshraw Mohammed, Kani Kamil, Kamil Korolczuk, Hardi Kurda, Soheil Soheili, Niga Salam, Ralf Wendt

Sunday, April 26, 2020, 8pm (CET)
on Radio CORAX 95.9 & streaming on radiocorax.de

Graphic: Score for Radio (Hardi Kurda, 2020)

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

On Friday, March 20, two guest artists of the Radio Art Residency meet for a concert night at Salon Villa Plagwitz in Leipzig.

André Damião II Narva 2

André Damião works between the fields of music and electronic arts and experiments with self-built mobile devices as means for itinerant sound art production. In 2019 he was the third artist-in-residence at Radio CORAX in Halle.

NARVA 2 Damião’s audio-visual instrument is part of a series of mobile music objects. Named after the GDR light bulb manufacturer, the hacked portable tv represents the genealogy of the portable means and its relation with programmed obsolescence, the means of production and their effects in daily life.

HARDI KURDA II Radiola Springs

Hardi Kurda is a composer, sound artist and improviser. His work reflects the listening in the time of crisis. In his performances and compositions he uses the radio as an instrument to explore the tonal material of the frequency band. Until May Kurda is guest artist at the Radio Art Residency in Halle.

RADIOLA SPRINGS Kurda’s prepared viola will have its first performance.

Radio Art Residency in Concert
Friday / March 20
doors: 8pm
Salon Villa Plagwitz / Karl-Heine-Str. 108
Leipzig

In cooperation with Seanaps

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