Radio Insomnia

Night of 15 May 2025

22:00
To enter night-time...

Welcome to Radio Insomnia.

Radio Insomnia cherishes the night as a space for listening. When a city falls asleep, the atmosphere amplifies sounds and voices that are subdued during the day: slow textures spread out, experimentations come to life, and intimate words are liberated in a collective radiophonic sharing. Sound becomes a witness to passing time, a temporal material that stretches as the night deepens.

For Noz Breizh, Radio Insomnia presents a live radiophonic sound piece composed with a multiplicity of nocturnal sound sources layered through playful use of a mixing console, treated as an instrument played by four hands. With nocturnal sounds, drones, radio archives, and voices of insomniacs, the radio activates a floating attention, or an attentive one — for night can also bring a certain clarity.

With the voices of Ivanne, Frédéric Danos, Macha Béranger, Zahra Pourazizi; sounds by Nicolas Montgermont et Melissa Deerson and texts by Paul Preciado, Arnaud Idelon Gonzaque Saint-Bris, Nina Bouraoui, Gaston Bachelard, Michaël Fœssel et Zahra Pourazizi.
22:00
The end.

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About

Radio Insomnia is an invitation to listen with insomnia, rather than against it, for productivity. Drawing on radio as a medium with its qualities for fostering social relations, and night-time as an intimate space for listening, we aim at developing radiophonic devices for night communities.

Radio Insomnia is interested in the political and poetic forces of waking at night, whether by constraint or by choice. Our starting point is that in the extractivist model of our late capitalist society, sleep is depoliticised: unproblematized as a resource for productivity, which is part of a very normative and synchronized schedule driven by labour and moral values.

Whereas periods of wakefulness at night, were not always considered to be an illness and deficiency. Listening and other activities in the middle of the night were practised as part of day-to-day life prior to the industrial revolution. with two periods of sleep, with a first and second sleep, punctuated by wake. Across cultures, night-time is also a time for orality, for talking and listening. Commonly understood as an alarm bell, insomnia is a signal that something is wrong. With Radio Insomnia this is the signal that we want to follow and also broadcast.

Contact:

With Radio Insomnia, we ask -- What is the potential of listening at night when wakefulness is embraced rather than endured? In other words, what does it mean to listen “with” insomnia, rather than against it, for productivity?

Radio Insomnia unfolds through live broadcasts, sound installations, and the creation of social spaces and. Night-time broadcasts are shaped by roundtable discussions, performances, artist commissions, and listening sessions, or include a live transmission from the public space.

Created by and for sleepless bodies, Radio Insomnia was born of the collaboration between curator Anabelle Lacroix and artist Nicolas Montgermont.

This project is supported by the University of New South Wales, MITACS, and the Consulate General of France in Montréal as part of the research project The Sociability of Sleep by McGill University and the Université de Montréal.

. Graphic design by Aline Schneider, based on Avara font by Raphael Bastide
. Radio Infrastructure by ∏node
. Website by Nicolas Montgermont
Archives

Radio Insomnia is an invitation to listen with insomnia, rather than against it, for productivity. Drawing on radio as a medium with its qualities for fostering social relations, and night-time as an intimate space for listening, we aim at developing radiophonic devices for night communities.

Radio Insomnia is interested in the political and poetic forces of waking at night, whether by constraint or by choice. Our starting point is that in the extractivist model of our late capitalist society, sleep is depoliticised: unproblematized as a resource for productivity, which is part of a very normative and synchronized schedule driven by labour and moral values.

Whereas periods of wakefulness at night, were not always considered to be an illness and deficiency. Listening and other activities in the middle of the night were practised as part of day-to-day life prior to the industrial revolution. with two periods of sleep, with a first and second sleep, punctuated by wake. Across cultures, night-time is also a time for orality, for talking and listening. Commonly understood as an alarm bell, insomnia is a signal that something is wrong. With Radio Insomnia this is the signal that we want to follow and also broadcast.

Contact:

With Radio Insomnia, we ask -- What is the potential of listening at night when wakefulness is embraced rather than endured? In other words, what does it mean to listen “with” insomnia, rather than against it, for productivity?

Radio Insomnia unfolds through live broadcasts, sound installations, and the creation of social spaces and. Night-time broadcasts are shaped by roundtable discussions, performances, artist commissions, and listening sessions, or include a live transmission from the public space.

Created by and for sleepless bodies, Radio Insomnia was born of the collaboration between curator Anabelle Lacroix and artist Nicolas Montgermont.

This project is supported by the University of New South Wales, MITACS, and the Consulate General of France in Montréal as part of the research project The Sociability of Sleep by McGill University and the Université de Montréal.

. Graphic design by Aline Schneider, based on Avara font by Raphael Bastide
. Radio Infrastructure by ∏node
. Website by Nicolas Montgermont