Three Transmissions from a Carceral State

Three Transmissions from a Carceral State is a live performance and radio broadcast bringing together three sound archives connected to the history of imprisonment in Upstate New York. The first set of recordings derives from a practice of listening to the electromagnetic and acoustic environments of active and decommissioned prisons in Wave Farm’s vicinity. The second set draws on Wave Farm’s archive of radio programs highlighting the analysis of imprisoned people, their families, and communities. Finally, a third set of recordings engage with contemporary abolitionists organizing in Upstate New York. The three sound archives will be mixed in real time to evoke the prison as a physical structure and a discursive site. Listening to its past, present, and future, the project seeks to contribute to the abolitionist imagining of imprisonment’s afterlife.