Receive-Transmit-Receive

2020, 24.02 min.
Shortwave Collective

Tessellated radio transmissions gathered during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, offer a global cocoon of modular compositions in Shortwave Collective’s Receive-Transmit-Receive. CQ code fragments, telephone conversations, and marine navigation weather reports, are woven into enigmatic harmonics and alternating digito-cosmi frequencies. Delivering sounds that range from a Bosnian Radio Station and a muffled Eagles “Hotel “California,” to a skillful fade of electronic humming into wind swept landscapes and eerie rhythmics. Classic shortwave STANAG signals, radio hams, time, utility, and number station transmissions, live alongside the tablah of a rich East Indian ballad and an array of European news broadcasts. Listeners are invited into a moveable audio feast where the traditional Chinese Guzheng, fades into a commentary on Taekwondo, only to be interrupted by distant intonations of Islamic prayer chants, and Italian CQ. The piece is a veritable call and response between the members of the Shortwave Collective, whose 10 cross-disciplinary practitioners feature Alyssa Moxley, Brigitte Hart, Franchesca Casauay, Georgia Muenster, Hannah Kemp-Welch, Kate Donovan, Lisa Hall, Maria Papadomanolaki, Sally Applin, and Sasha Engelmann, spanning a global radius that stretches across France, Germany, Norway, Greece, the UK, and the USA. Receive-Transmit-Receive offers imaginative possibilities for inquiry, intimacy, and connection within the nebulous liminal. This work was originally broadcast on Radiophrenia (Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, 2020), and as part of RAD Performance's International Women's #TakeBackTheStreets Soundride in Vienna (2022). - Described by Wave Farm Radio Art Fellow Desiree Mwalimu-Banks.