The Far Becomes Near: When Iron Speaks
The Far Becomes Near is a four part radio series creatively archiving the history of radio broadcasting in the United Arab Emirates, from before the UAE’s formation to current digital systems. The programmes are radiophonic experiments punctuated by interviews with local historians, academics, cultural commentators and the federation’s earliest broadcasters. While the works mention places and dates, this series reimagines the documentary in an almost theatrical manner, with each episode imaginatively exploring a different form. Sound artists Fari Bradley and Chris Weaver treat the interviews as threads, weaving a radiophonic story as each distinct episode unfolds. Episode 1: When Iron Speaks: A transmission from the future. Beamed from space to the present day as an archived audio database, recent history is observed by people of another millennium. The archive of early memories are primary and secondary sources, describing a Gulf tuned in to a world outside. Artists Fari Bradley and Chris Weaver collaborate across a variety of performance, sculpture, and media practices. They work with experimental music, radio, performance, and sculpture, and, in a world dominated by visual culture, investigate sound as a means to establish and question new sets of social relations between subjects and space.
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HEARwHERE
RADIO SERIES
Sound artists Fari Bradley and Chris Weaver take to the road to explore the manner in which one's sense of identity is sharpened by suspension of place during a voyage. Our sense of community in the world - whether as part of a neighborhood, a workplace, or an interest-based community - is built from familiar cues and interaction with sights, sounds, and other stimuli. On the road these cues are disconnected and one necessarily becomes a citizen of a wider world, the planet itself.
Captured within these audio journeys are varying locales and places of connection and transition: airport lounges, walkways between buildings, and journeys between cities where a sense of place is fractured and re-arranged. Bradley and Weaver's audio collages feature narratives from a collection of cassette audio diaries, soundscapes, overheard music and snippets of conversation, all in service to the larger universal context that quietly envelops us all.
Artists Fari Bradley and Chris Weaver collaborate across a variety of performance, sculpture, and media practices. They work with experimental music, radio, performance, and sculpture, and, in a world dominated by visual culture, investigate sound as a means to establish and question new sets of social relations between subjects and space.
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