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The Radio Art Hour: Jasmina Al-Qaisi (Audio)

Dec 10, 2022
Produced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellows and Artistic Director Tom Roe.
"Homoniememorimorph" by Jasmina Al-Qaisi, introduced by Jos Alejandro Rivera, is featured today. Originally performed in 2020 for Anybody out there?! (100 Days of Radio in Germany) at D21 Artspace in Leipzig, Germany, Homoniememorimorph was a live radio experiment using auto-archival methods crafted on the go. Jasmina Al-Qaisi describes the radio action, of which she has excerpted and edited, as an ongoing text writing method with, and for voice, where she re-writes her memory by crossing bridges between words. "Homonimemoriorph," an invented word of a longer series of invented words by the artist, sonically and visually resembles other words. It is a manifestation of misspelled speaking, and a practice of Al-Qaisi as a poet, artist and radio maker. In the piece, she says the invented word is used to define the words that I feel fit together, and that stands for me, being here taking over talking over the radio; trying to re-order my memoriesto envision some sort of agency on what our memory is. "Homonimemoriorph" casts a wide net which allows Al-Qaisis words to create and pass through multiple forms and meanings depending on what associations the listener makes. The improvised nature of the piece often results in overtly confessional moments that transform ordinary approaches to what is considered useful or important information. The first public instance of this project was streamed over internet radio, and broadcast on Radio Corax 95.9 FM and UKW 87.5; the latter, covering the vicinity of D21 Artspace. Due to an un-planned delay in her headphones, Al-Qaisi's voice, thinking, and as a result, the conversation with herself, was forced to slow down. Navigating this live radio time stretch, she spoke while sitting before a table of tiny, misplaced objects she gathered over the span of 15 years. They included scrap papers of invented words and poems, stones, shells, and pieces of metal items. As Al-Qaisi reflected on these objects, she re-wrote the importance they seemed to hold for her, and combined these new histories with samples of YouTube glitches that included insect, animal, and planet sounds, and samples of her friends attempting to pronounce homonimemorimorph. Episode 098.