RADIO ART ARCHIVE
From My Window: Dreams, Hopes & Disappointments
Rena Anakwe aka DJ Lady Lane's From My Window: Dreams, Hopes and Disappointments aired as part the 2020 Radiophrenia program, a temporary art radio station broadcasting live from Glasgow's Center for Contemporary Arts, on 87.9-FM. Rena Anakwe’s luminous sound creation is an assemblage of field recordings taken during the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic vis-a-vis the windowsills of the artists home, and various New York City locales. A phonographic cocoon leads listeners through urban groves where sound ebbs and flows through myriad channels. Footsteps in motion, birds chattering, a door opening, steady rain, and a New Orleans-style birthday serenade, give way to dreamy ambient synth and gentle transfers of harmonic vocals. Tapering off through cavernous tunnels of wailing sirens, we find ourselves again in the procession of a gospel brass medley, a series of chord modulations, and the sound of the artist’s own dystopian voice. Anakwe leaves us to our own mirrors as she reflects on the inevitability of time and loss, resilience and false currencies, and the possibility of breath, and imagination within a collective annihilation. - Described by Wave Farm Radio Art Fellow Desiree Mwalimu-Banks.