Future Artefacts FM – Details, episodes & analysis

Is it possible to decolonise mineral collections? How might our understanding of mineralogy support climate activism or anti-racist methodologies?

For the second part of our double bill with co-founder Niamh Schmidtke, we are listening to the final half of Pulling Blood from a Stone, a 35 minute radio play. Alberto Duman joins us as co-presenter, addressing key questions in act 3 and 4 about how minerals might hold kinship with specific places or peoples affected colonisation. Diving into Tsumeb, Namibia, in the early 1900s, and a near future in Berlin, these two acts are voiced by minerals which want to fight against oppressive colonists, and the impact of geology’s categorisation of their elements. We touch on how anthropomorphising such rocks can help share their stories and rebellions. This also becomes a way to unpick the roles of these beings within our technology, such as in batteries and the ways their voices might be heard through a miners’ strike, the shattering of stones in oxygen or the rise and fall of mountains.

Pulling Blood from a Stone is part of the Earth Water Sky Environmental Sciences and Art Research, Commissioning and Production Programme curated by Ariane Koek and funded by Fondation Didier et Martine Primat to whom we give grateful thanks. 

Artists @niamhschmidtke 

Host @ellaberto  @influential_bro

Music @jtre_v

Broadcast through @rtm.fm

Niamh Schmidtke (b.1997, Dublin) explores the political complications of ‘being green’ by cultivating conversations with the environment, through speculation, audio, ceramics and installations. They examine the relationship between listening and speaking, to consider the kinds of voices that deep time, the sea, or humans could have with one another. In 2023 they were the EARTH artist-in-residence at the Technological University of Berlin, with Science Gallery International, a research residency with the university’s mineral collection. Recent projects also include How to Harness the Wind (2023), a collection of 3D printed clay crystals mimicking those mined for wind turbine construction, funded by Arts Council Ireland, as part of the Hunt Museum’s, Night’s Candles are Burnt Out exhibition. Schmidtke is the SADP (formerly SAUL) artist in residence, researching local clays through workshops and lectures with students. They hold an MFA (Hons) from Goldsmiths, University of London (2021), and a Ba (Hons) from LSAD (2019). They have co-produced the radio show Future Artefacts FM with artist Nina Davies since 2021, receiving an Arts Council England National Lottery project grant, and funding from the Elephant Trust.

Alberto Duman is an artist, university lecturer and independent researcher whose work is situated between art, urban studies and social practice. He is interested in the cultural production of urban spaces, narratives and atmospheres, and the agency of art within the immaterial economy of this production.

In 2016 he was the Leverhulme Trust artist in residence at University of East London, where he produced the project Music for Masterplanning. In 2018, the co-edited anthology from the project 'Regeneration Songs: Sounds of Loss and Opportunity from East London' was published by Repeater Books. 

He is Senior Lecturer in Fine Arts and Programme Leader for the MA Expanded Printmaking at Middlesex University in London, a convenor of the online course PILOT at Autograph and a member of the DIG Collective. 

His ongoing project ‘Haunting the Future City’ is developing through educational spaces, films, exhibitions, ‘talking ghosts’ collective writing workshops, conference presentations and building up towards a PhD at Kings College London, Human Geography department.

If we could communicate with the minerals around us, what voices would we hear? What would they speak about? And what relationships would rocks and minerals have with one another?

For this special double bill, co-founder Niamh Schmidtke is sharing their recent audio play, Pulling Blood from a Stone, across two episodes. We have invited guest Alberto Duman to co-present the first half of this 35 minute work. Act 1 and 2 follow pre-history, set 2 billion years ago, and in 500BC, where we are introduced to groups of minerals discussing what it means to be alive and the types of autonomy they have on the planet. Together we discuss the implications of speculating on mineral conversations, and what roles they’ve had in human history, namely in the production of cultural objects and as examples of wealth across time. We collectively imagine the roles communication has, and what ways we make contact with rocks, crystals and stones without speech. Touching on the politics of time, and how we might connect deep time and political time scales, as a way to live well during climate crises, this first episode begins our thoughts about the connections between non-human beings and the scientific valuations placed upon them. 

Pulling Blood from a Stone is part of the Earth Water Sky Environmental Sciences and Art Research, Commissioning and Production Programme curated by Ariane Koek and funded by Fondation Didier et Martine Primat to whom we give grateful thanks. 

Niamh Schmidtke (b.1997, Dublin) explores the political complications of ‘being green’ by cultivating conversations with the environment, through speculation, audio, ceramics and installations. They examine the relationship between listening and speaking, to consider the kinds of voices that deep time, the sea, or humans could have with one another. In 2023 they were the EARTH artist-in-residence at the Technological University of Berlin, with Science Gallery International, a research residency with the university’s mineral collection. Recent projects also include How to Harness the Wind (2023), a collection of 3D printed clay crystals mimicking those mined for wind turbine construction, funded by Arts Council Ireland, as part of the Hunt Museum’s, Night’s Candles are Burnt Out exhibition. Schmidtke is the SADP (formerly SAUL) artist in residence, researching local clays through workshops and lectures with students. They hold an MFA (Hons) from Goldsmiths, University of London (2021), and a Ba (Hons) from LSAD (2019). They have co-produced the radio show Future Artefacts FM with artist Nina Davies since 2021, receiving an Arts Council England National Lottery project grant, and funding from the Elephant Trust.

Alberto Duman is an artist, university lecturer and independent researcher whose work is situated between art, urban studies and social practice. He is interested in the cultural production of urban spaces, narratives and atmospheres, and the agency of art within the immaterial economy of this production.

In 2016 he was the Leverhulme Trust artist in residence at University of East London, where he produced the project Music for Masterplanning. In 2018, the co-edited anthology from the project 'Regeneration Songs: Sounds of Loss and Opportunity from East London' was published by Repeater Books. 

He is Senior Lecturer in Fine Arts and Programme Leader for the MA Expanded Printmaking at Middlesex University in London, a convenor of the online course PILOT at Autograph and a member of the DIG Collective. 

His ongoing project ‘Haunting the Future City’ is developing through educational spaces, films, exhibitions, ‘talking ghosts’ collective writing workshops, conference presentations and building up towards a PhD at Kings College London, Human Geography department.

Artist: Niamh Schmidtke

Hosts: Alberto Duman and Nina Davies

Music: Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer: Mat Jenner

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead

Sound Actors (in chronological order): Deborah S. Phillips, Oğuzcan Özyurt, Claudia Wiedemer, Sydney LaFaire

Audio Contributions: Dr. Johannes Giebel and Nikolai Azariah

German Translator: Beatrice Zaidenberg

For this special episode we are thrilled to share Sienna Rackall’s 11 minute audio, Before the Now. Sienna’s work was developed with us over the past 4 months after being selected from worldbuilding workshops for young people (13-18) led by Future Artefacts through HVH arts in August 2022. Sienna’s work centres on the distant planet, Minerva’s, spoilt queen, Audrea, who doesn’t understand why her people are angered by her decadent lifestyle. With Sienna, we discuss secret languages, the line between conspiracy theories and myth and how dinosaurs might have arrived on earth. We’d also like to thank Debbie Clark, the founder of HvH arts, for taking time to share a few words on the show, and helping us host workshops during the summer.

Sienna Rackall was awarded this mentorship through HVH arts. HVH ARTS is a registered charity inspiring a generation of young people by offering them a gateway to the arts. By funding after and out of school classes in primary and secondary state schools in England, the Foundation provides children with the inspiration and tools to develop lifelong artistic passions.

This episode, and the workshops with HVH Arts have been kindly supported by Arts Council England National Lottery Funding.

Artist: Sienna Rackall

Hosts: Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke

Music: Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer: Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead

Bioturbation; Or, The Humiliation of HuMan by WRMS

In this episode we welcome Jon K Shaw to discuss his work Bioturbation; Or, The Humiliation of Human by WRMS, a 13 minute sound work. Digging through layers of jazz, poetry, news reports and Jon’s own voice, worms are the central character, an essential creature in the process of making soil, and sustaining life on earth. Together we explore how to become more worm-like, both as a necessary force in ecology, and as a metaphor for how we, as humans, metabolise life; how process and product, eating and excreting, could exist within other beings. Through the bodily movements of the worms, moving the strata of soil and remaking nutritional gradients, their acts of worldbuilding become a tangible perspective from which to speculate new narratives on waste, extraction and being with the planet.

Bio:

Jon K Shaw is a writer, editor, educator and irregular farmhand based in Orkney. He teaches in a number of universities and colleges including the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London; and in postgraduate Fine Arts at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation -- though none of these institutions support his research. With Tom Robinson he founded and edited Rattle: A Journal at the Convergence of Art and Writing, and with Theo Reeves-Evison edited and introduced the book Fiction as Method (Sternberg, 2017). He is commissioning editor of the new Zer0 Books series Zer0 Agri, which aims to reconnect real agricultural practice and progressive politics. The imprint will launch its first books in 2023. Amongst other writing projects, Jon is currently finishing a book on Antonin Artaud's ecological thought, called Lucid Materialism. His "annotated photo-essay" on the film-philosophy of Pierre Creton and the seaweed-eating sheep of North Ronaldsay will be published by SHIMA journal in early 2023.

Artist: Jon K Shaw

Hosts: Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke

Music: Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer: Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead

For this episode artist Yuli Serfaty shares their new work, ‘Picnic Zone’ with Future Artefacts FM. Introduced by the voice of Golem, a character from Jewish folklore, this 15 minute soundscape presents an alternate present where surveillance technology has mutated with the Yatir Forest. Set at the edge of the Israeli desert and the West Bank, together we discuss Serfaty’s current speculative research; how the desert’s inhabitants have affected the military architecture within this monocultural forest, the ‘safety’ of picnic zones in an altered Israel and a need for amorphic beings.

Yuli Serfaty (1992, Israel) is a London based multimedia artist researching natural landscapes in relation to local and global politics. Serfaty uses Speculative Fiction methodologies in order to World-build installations in textual, sonic, digital, and physical forms. Serfaty’s approach is an open-ended ecology in which each element exists in relation; more-than-human webs where landscapes are protagonists, making space for alternative power structures in which the marginalised, the unimportant and the overlooked take central stage.

Serfaty exhibited both nationally and internationally with selected exhibitions including: Cosmoses, Xxijra Hii, London (2022), London Grads Now.21, Saatchi Gallery, London (2021), Spazio Volta, ArtVerona 16, Verona (2021), Seam, Strata, Seance, Collective Ending, London (2021), and has featured work at DOCUMENTARY: Who Speaks for a Space?, London Short Film Festival, 2021. In 2021 Serfaty had a solo show at Arad Contemporary Art Centre after being an Artist in Residence for two consecutive years. Serfaty has been the June 2021 Artist in Residence at Gazelli Art House, London, and they are a recipient of the 2021 Sarabande Emerging Artist Award, as well as the 2021 Slade Prize.

Artist: Yuli Serfaty

Hosts: Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke

Music: Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer: Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead

In this episode, Mary Hurrell shares and discusses her eleven-minute piece Avalanche Candy, a sonic choreography which explores the idea of falling. Guided by the vibrational and embodied quality of the work, we discuss audio as a way to communicate emotional and physical knowledge and intelligence. Collaging text, synthesised voice and field recordings, Hurrell explores notions of gravity within a digital realm; the listener is choreographed through a space of organic and artificial sensations, deconstructed movements and digital physicalities, a bubblegum-industrial dance.

Bio

Mary Hurrell (b.1982 South Africa) is an artist working across sound production, live performance and sculpture as a form of expanded choreography. She is interested in forms of language and movement in relation to physical and psychological experience. She has exhibited and performed both nationally and internationally, with selected solo performances, projects and exhibitions including: BUOY, Nicoletti Contemporary, London, (2021); Movement Study 6, The Bower, London (2018); 3 (OXIORCAD), Flat Time House, London (2018); 2 (AERIAL), Kunstraum, London (2018); 1 (PITCH), Body Ecologies 1,Centro Botin, Spain (2018); StereoSkin, Herdubreid Biosal, Seydisfjordur, Iceland (2017); EROTIC MECHANICS, Martello Street, London (2016); Call/Coda, Carlos/Ishikawa, London (2012). Selected group performances, exhibitions and festivals include; RADIOPHRENIA, CCA, Glasgow (2022); Cafe OTO, London (2021); Auto-Poem, Nicoletti X London Gallery Weekend, London (2021); UNDEX, Jupiter Rising x Edinburgh Art Festival, Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh (2019); Chou, Yamakiwa Gallery, Japan (2018); Body Echo, Nicoletti Contemporary, Paris (2018); An Evening Of Performances, The Roberts Institute of Art, London (2016); London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015); My Vocabulary Did This Too Me, South London Gallery (2014)

Artist: Mary Hurrell

Hosts: Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke

Music: Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer: Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead

This month we listen to Erica Scourti’s twelve-minute piece "Nea Oneira", or New Dreams in English. Considering the role of Lauren Berlant’s cruel optimism – when a desired future becomes an obstacle to your present – Scourti’s work dissects the dreams presented by Greek tourism and East London property developments. Fragments of audio collage Greek and English; property advertisements from London, taxi drivers in Athens and snippets from border patrol services, with 90s rave beats, elevator music and Scourti’s own narration. Together, we question the pursuit for authenticity, what ethical tourism can be, and story-telling within targeted marketing.

Erica Scourti is an artist and writer,  born in Athens and based in Athens and London. She has performed, exhibited and presented talks internationally, at spaces like High Line New York, Wellcome Collection, Kunsthalle Wien, Hayward Gallery, Munich Kunstverein, ICA London and EMST Athens; she recently participated in the 7th Athens Biennale (2021). Her writing has been published in Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry (Ignota Press, 2018) and Fiction as Method (2017, Sternberg) amongst others, and she was guest editor of the Happy Hypocrite- Silver Bandage journal (2019).

Artist: Erica Scourti

Hosts: Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke

Music: Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer: Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead

For this episode, Akinsola Lawanson shares their work Bosode, a 12 minute audio narrative, which follows the tale of Bosode, a girl who is transported to the spirit world and sent on a quest. Combining deities, Orumila and Eshu, from Ifa religion with binary mathematics, Lawanson’s influences of Nollywood horror and early 2000s game aesthetics reveal Yoruba culture outside of contemporary binaries. Through discussing fantasy narratives, divination systems and their relationship with determinism, Bosode acts as a parable, warning us about how we can decide our own fate when more powerful beings are around.

Akinsola Lawanson is a British-Nigerian multi-disciplinary artist based in London. Through different mediums such as moving image, video game engines and motorised sculptures; their practice examines a variety of themes including relational systems, digital technologies and process philosophy.

WEBSITE

Artist Akinsola Lawanson

Hosts Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke

Music Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead

​In this episode, our co-host Nina Davies gets into the artist’s seat, sharing her work ‘Bionic Step’, a ​twelve-minute ​fictional conversation with an academic whose research explores techno-faith, a new form of spirituality which attempts to understand human’s changing relationship with technology. In the episode Nina and Niamh discuss how this fictional dance called Bionic Step acts as a future version of the 1518 Dancing Plague in Strasbourg. Together they examine the changing functions of dance in the aftermath of ​TikTok and how ​technological advancements affect the creation and attention towards faith.

Coming from an extensive dance and performance background, Nina Davies (b. 1991, Canada) now situates her work within the Fine Arts; questioning choreography beyond its performative state. Using moving image, sound, text and fiction her practice aims to further critical discussion around dance by observing how it intersects with language and where it begins to take on commodified or material forms. Her work has been exhibited at SEAGER Gallery, London; Robota - Center for Advanced Studies, Bratislava; Museum Tijdschrift Cultuurcentrum, Brugge; and Strangelove Time Based Media Festival, London. She has performed at Lilian Baylis Studios, London; The Ailey Citigroup Theatre, NYC; and The Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Vancouver. Nina co-hosts the bi-monthly radio show called Future Artefacts alongside artist Niamh Schmidtke. Together Nina and Niamh present audio works by artists that use fiction as a way of exploring the world at present.

Image: Clara Atkinson

Artist Nina Davies

Host Niamh Schmidtke

Music Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead

In the fifth episode, alongside Nikolai Azariah, we share and discuss his work ‘Visions in the Crucible’, a twelve-minute audio narrative. By following the protagonist through an alternate world in which people become crystallised in salt, Azariah invites us to consider the multiple interpretations of salt. Made in tandem with his real-life observations of salt as a material, the work blends the study of alchemy with fiction. Together we discuss the links between female mystics and medieval alchemists through gendered knowledge and their varying relationships with science and spirituality.

Nikolai Azariah is a Finnish-British video and installation artist whose practice delves into memory, place and poetry, navigating myth to make sense of the world. His recent work investigates salt as material and manifestation of poetic meaning. As a juncture of opposites and the essence of corporeality, salt is taken as both subject and framework for his practice. This is viewed through the lens of alchemy, a deeply material and profoundly spiritual practice, combining thoughts on the human soul with experimentation in the laboratory. Restructuring, possibility and transformation are inherent in the alchemical processes he uses to uncover salt’s hidden virtues.

Artist Nikolai Azariah

Hosts Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke

Music Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead