Caught by the River

RadioActive – on Water

12th September 2024

Curated by Meira Asher and Stephen Shiell, RadioActive – on Water is a six episode podcast series exploring the interactions between transmission, sound, activism and water. Each episode is created by a different artist/group of artists who engage with water politics and the politics of listening through the medium of radio.

‘An Ear to River ~ counterflows’ by Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell & Hannah White) invites the audience to listen with the Channelsea river, a recovering waterway in East London and home to the city’s largest combined sewage outfall.

‘River song, singing rivers’ by Lisa Blackmore and Leonel Vásquez navigates the Bogotá River in Colombia through a more-than-human song, created in collaboration with the living forces that shape the watershed’s ecosystems.

‘Watered’ by RE-PEAT collective approaches water justice through imagining the perspective of water nself, by drawing stories and definitions of bodies of water, and n’s entanglement in relation with other bodies, bogs, bugs, sundew, moss and more.

‘Sonic Traces’ by Margarida Mendes is a journey from the deep ocean to the Mississippi river, to expose how traces of pollution, sonic and chemical, travel through watery space impacting communities across ecosystems.

‘River Breathing’ by Carlos Monleon and Nathaniel Mann examines the impact of irrigation systems on human and more-than-human communities through the Ebro river in Spain and its endangered clam population.

‘Liquidation’ by Meira Asher interrogates the politically engineered water crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Jordan Valley where Israel deliberately and strategically deprives Palestinian shepherd communities of access to water.

All episodes are available to listen to here via the RadioActive – on Water website, along with more information about the series and each individual episode.