“Radio Silence” is a ten-part radio event from Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz that will launch on July 29 with a live performance on Independence Mall in Philadelphia. The series returns famed Iraqi broadcast journalist Bahjat Adulawahed to the airwaves, along with the talents of Iraqi refugees, Iraq War veterans, musicians and performers, to frame the experiences of the participants and reconstruct an Iraq “dematerialized by literal destruction and diasporadic separation.”
According to Mural Arts,
Material is drawn from their own experiences in Iraq, America, and in between–from the progressive Iraq of the 1960s, to the decimation of physical and emotional landscapes during and after the 2003 American invasion and subsequent war in Iraq, to the realities of life in the United States, post-immigration and/or post-war. The program animates Iraq through scattered protagonists, conflating geography, time, and experience, as the audio (ranging from field recording and first-person narrative to music and poetry), layers like fragments of excavated artifacts.
The Prometheus Radio Project is a presenting partner along with Mural Arts Philadelphia, Warrior Writers and Philadelphia public access and LPFM station PhillyCAM. The entire series will be available free to air for non-commercial stations, as well as available streaming online and as a podcast for listeners. The project partners hope to bring together a global network of stations to air this unique radio performance project.
The July 29 kick-off performance will be broadcast live on PhillyCAM, and available as a live stream. Learn more at the Mural Arts website.
Here’s a trailer for “Radio Silence”:
