radio kal
TOOLING#2: AUDIO RECORDING & COLLAGE
(ACIDRAINS OF ANDROMEDA | SOUNDHOUNDS OF THE PROFOUND mit psXssotm) 

Workshop with Promona Sengupta and Shanti Suki Osman
based on feminist DIY methodologies and open source software

27 February and 6 March 2021, 12 am – 4 pm CET

Online workshop in English language for maximum 10 participants. Please register at school@district-berlin.com until 24 February.

radio kal TOOLING #2 focuses on how to record and collage different types of sound material for radio and experimental soundscapes. The workshop will mediate skills for listening, identifying and creating sound as well as how to use the open source software soundtrap for recording and collaging. Led by Promona Sengupta and Shanti Suki Osman, the workshop will link technical learning with collaborative knowledge and art making based on impulses from Speaking Barnacular: Watery Sanctuaries. Participants will be guided through techniques of worldbuilding and speculative projection through audio capturing from other worlds.

An exercise in liberatory speculation, Promona Sengupta’s research project Speaking Barnacular proposes to look at swimming, flotation, deep-water diving techniques, controlled drowning, underwater breathing and altered states of human consciousness in the oceanic womb as socio-politically rooted practices of dissident history and material culture. The project developed during her studio and research grant at District draws inspiration from worldbuilding, science fiction and anticolonial activism.

radio kal is an online radio channel which we initiate as part of the trans*oceanic platform a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. kal. radio kal is a fleeting space for artistic experimentation and for gathering community across space and time. With radio kal it is our hope to create bridges that vibrate across multiple tongues, so we can listen to each other sharing our worlds in story and song. radio kal is DIY from the onset. Alongside creating contributions, a series of radio workshops and online tutorials with the sound & radio artist Shanti Suki Osman opens the platform for learning and making experimental and critical radio together. Rooted in feminist methodologies the tooling workshops also channel some of the wealth of knowledge of doing radio formats online that has become available with the pandemic.

Promona Sengupta is an academic, an activist and a curator currently involved at District Berlin as studio and research grant holder in the frame of a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. kal. She is finishing her PhD at the International Research Center: Interweaving Performance Cultures, at FU Berlin. She co-founded Mo’Halla along with Jyothidas KV and Prabhas Tripathy, a pop-up space for progressive art, culture and politics, based in Berlin. She was part of the Young Curators Academy at Maxim Gorki Theater as part of the Hebstsalon 2019.

Shanti Suki Osman is a Berlin-based artist and educator working with song, sound and radio, exploring the topics of identities, privilege, anti-racism and feminisms. She is research associate and teacher for Musicology at Humboldt University and doctoral candidate for Music Pedagogy at The Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg focusing on women* of colour, sound-making and space-making. In Late Nights In Squat Bars she writes and sings feminist electro-pop with Dafne Della Dafne, and curates festivals and group shows – including the sound art exhibition and event series Hearing Now (Berlin June 2018). She was co-director of Die Remise (2019), a critical race and historical school project in Berlin founded by Carmen Mörsch, which was part of the preliminary programme of 11th Berlin Biennale (2019-20).