Highlighting progressive voices reflecting on grassroots activism and the arts.

Through interviews and in studio discussions, Free City Radio gives a voice to alternative perspectives on contemporary political forces, focusing on underreported realities in Quebec society and global situations.

Every Wednesday 11 - 11:30am (EDT)

November 16, 2022: Sonic Fields of Reflection (Live from Artexte)

Broadcasting live from Sonic Fields of Reflection at Artexte, including live reflections from curator Mojeanne Behzadi and artist Martín Rodríguez in studio. An excerpt of Martín's work "In Search of Aztlan" will be broadcast. Also Julia E. Dyck, artist, radio producer has contributed an original work to this broadcast. Finally we will hear an excerpt of a conversation between Hajra Waheed & Reece Cox (originally broadcast on Cashmere Radio in Berlin) which is part of the "Sonic Fields of Reflection" broadcast.

As a transmission and sound artist, Martín Rodríguez’s work emerges from his Chicanx upbringing along the Arizona-Mexico border. He employs performance, intervention, and installation as a process for deciphering aural histories and intertwined identities. "In Search of Aztlan… is an intervention-based work following the Chicanx artist Martín Rodríguez as he explores the territory around his childhood home, investigating how borders, both physical and psychological, shape our individual and collective identities, and in doing so cracking a window into the US/MX border. The project features audio recordings from Rodriguez’s initial radio investigations along the migrant paths of the Sonoran desert utilizing a cassette deck radio, a crystal radio, and an experimental radio antenna that fuses the Mexican folk craft known as an Ojo de Dios (God’s eye) with a traditional loop antenna. By merging audio recordings of various freely migrating radio signals along with field recordings, the resulting work explores the ability of sound to embody the presence of human-made borders, and the identities of those who exist along their margins."

Hajra Waheed’s multidisciplinary practice ranges from painting and drawing to video, sound, sculpture and installation. Amongst other issues, she explores the nexus between security, surveillance and the covert networks of power that structure lives, while also addressing the traumas and alienation of displaced subjects affected by legacies of colonial and state violence. Characterized by a distinct visual language and unique poetic approach, her works often use the ordinary as a means to convey the profound, and landscape as a medium to transpose human struggle and a radical politics of resistance and resilience.

Julia Dyck is an artist, radio producer originally from Treaty One Territory/Winnipeg who works between Brussels and Montreal/Tiohtià:ke. Dyck's relational and speculative practice explores the possible connections between the body, consciousness, technology and the environment through performance, composition, installation and transmission. Julia has been a long time contributor to Ffiles Radio.

Mojeanne Behzadi is a curator and poet based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. She is currently the director of Art Speaks, an international contemporary art lecture series and the curator of research and programs at Artexte. Mojeanne holds an MA in Art History from Concordia University and works as an independent curator on numerous projects. She recently developed and hosted the Trajectories podcast for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and curated Spillover Love at the Stewart Hall Art Gallery in Pointe-Claire, a group show presented in the summer of 2021. Her current curatorial research focuses on community practices as a framework for resistance, mobilization and social transformation. (Photo taken by Christopher Honeywell.)

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