Radio, listening and insomnia with Anabelle Lacroix and Nicolas Montgermont.

Accompanied by soundworks Squeeeeak! by Diana Duta & Paul Haworth, In bed by MP Hopkins and Le sommeil d'Albertine by Ocean Viva Silver.

An opportunity to talk about sleep disorders, sociability and care, and the exhibition InSomnolence with Aleksandra Kaminska, Alanna Thain and Elizaveta Solomonova,

Aleksandra Kaminska and Alanna Thain are co-directors of The Sociability of Sleep research group, that explores sleep equity, and the social forms of care it requires. Elizaveta Solomonova is a scientist working on states of wakefulness and sleep, with an interest in the links between social cognition, sleep and meditation.

Navigation of different states of consciousness with sounds Épyphise by Girl Head and To die a little more by Oto Ninski.

Discussion with the artist Nik Forrest, with a listening session including a new work created for Radio Insomnia.
Nik Forrest is an artist whose practice includes sound, installation, performance and composition, as well as video, drawing and collage. Through listening, they focus on techniques to increase attention to the entanglement of human and non-human forces and their emotional, social and environmental relationships.

A discussion on chronic fatigue based on Jonathan Sterne’s book Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment (2022) and the artistic practice of Rouzbeh Shadpey. The interview is introduced by Music for Insomnia, a new drone composition by Jonathan Sterne.

Jonathan Sterne is Professor of Culture and Technology in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. He has written extensively on the history of sound, and is currently working on projects dealing with signal processing, impairment, and AI. His numerous books include MP3: The Political Economy of Compression and The Audible Past.

Rouzbeh Shadpey is an artist, musician and writer with a doctorate in medicine and inexhaustible energy. His work explores the (de)colonial pathophysiology of illness, focusing on the aesthetics and poetics of diagnosis and fatigue. Under the name GOLPESAR / گلپسر, he combines avant-garde electronics and guitar with echoes of Iranian sonority.

Cuando el fuego suena by Ana Maria Romano G, Empty Cab by Gaël Segalen and Psychogenic Love by Vamp Acid.

This radiophonic sound walk will make audible the situated experiences at night-time carried by self-identifying female and Queer immigrant artists from South America. The performance and score include sonic prompts and storytelling to activate feminist ears, an expression of Sarah Ahmed that points to a practice of listening to fight institutional violence. The live broadcast highlights the relational aspect and performativity of listening practices and nocturnal wandering simultaneously.

Amanda Gutiérrez explores the experience of home, belonging and cultural identity, focusing on the details of everyday practices and their key role in defining our individual and collective identities. Gutiérrez’s artistic practice focuses on sound and listening, performance and video.

A journey home with commentary on encounters made along the way.

A recorded conversation about the influential and contested figure of the flâneur who represents the ability to wander detached from society.

Elena Biserna is an art historian and curator. Her work focuses on listening, sound in the arts, 'situated' artistic practices and their relationship to public and political spheres. Her recent books include Walking from Scores and Going Out: Walking, Listening, Soundmaking (2022)

Amanda Gutiérrez explores the experience of home, belonging and cultural identity, focusing on the details of everyday practices and their key role in defining our individual and collective identities. Trained as a set designer at the National Theatre School, Gutiérrez uses a range of media including sound art and performance.

777 by Léa Julien, The Screen Under My Eyelids by Jessica Arseneau, fall(sss) by Yoojin Lee & Giuseppe Termine, Nuits de Joachim Séné, Autoportrait la nuit by Ella Bellone, A Tape Recorder at the End of the World by Kieran Boland,

Certainly (certainly) by Rachel Schenberg & Jordi Infeld, Le rêve qui pa/ense by Colette Tron & Jean-Marc Montera, Noyau de Nuit by Doriane Souilhol and Quelle heure est-il? by Frédéric Danos.

Back on Radio Insomnia with Anabelle Lacroix and Nicolas Montgermont for a performative evening in the presence of the public, exploring the possibilities of waking and of the nocturnal radio medium, in the company of Laure Boer,'s Sommeil and Mel Deerson's Because wait.

Begins My life is a love letter addressed to you by Benny Nemer
Throughout the night, the artist reads a six-part letter written to his grandmother, Montreal potter Rosalie Namer (1925-2006), contemplating the role that night played in their shared sensory, emotional and relational universe.

Benny Nemer is an artist, diarist, and researcher based in Paris. His practice unfolds through an evolving ensemble of materials, among them the human voice, floral arranging, epistolary writing, private libraries, and queer archives take an important part.

A discussion with special guests about experiences of paid and unpaid labour at night. What are the night-time infrastructures that enable daytime to function? What activities are confined to the night? And what are the class and gender dynamics associated with them?

With Camille Desrochers (Night Council Montréal and GRIP, Groupe de recherches et d'intervention psychosocial), Beatriz da Silva Takahashi, Doctoral student in architecture and research assistant on McGill University’s project Night-time Design with and for Marginalized Communities, Eddying Jackson (Canada Post, Artist), and Oliver Philbin Briscoe (DJ, and electronic music producer and co-founder of FANTOM - Fédération pour les Arts Nocturnes Comprenant Les Travailleur·euses et Organisateur·ices de Montréal)

A listening session that evokes memories of factory night work, the sun rising during long periods of production or nocturnal wine harvest, with La Notte by Florence Cherrier, Nightshift by Nina Pankhaniya and Courants d'air by Celsian Langlois.

Temps de travail, syncopé (2018, excerpt) juxtaposes the rhythms of travel (on foot, by bike, by bus, by train), the rhythms of mechanical production, the silences of night shifts and the voices of those who live their lives out of sync with the traditional nine to five.

Les Rumeurs de la Montagne Rouge, En Chœur, Convergent (2014 excerpt) lets us hear the spontaneous night-time protests that took place during the major student strikes in Quebec in 2012.

Playing with the intermodulation of micro-transmitters, Martín Rodríguez offers us a wandering listening performance with nocturnal recordings of non-human sounds.

Focused on transmission and sound, Martín Rodríguez's work emerges from his chicanx upbringing along the border between Arizona and Mexico. He uses performance, intervention and installation as processes for deciphering sound histories and intertwined identities.

A discussion on the possibilities of radio for insomnia with artists and makers of night-time radio. What voices, sounds, devices and experiments can open up the potential of radio at night? With Chantal Dumas, Philippe Battikha and Martín Rodríguez.

Philippe Battikha is an artist, musician, composer and community organiser who explores our relationship with the sounds that surround us and their influence on our experiences. Focused on transmission and sound, Martín Rodríguez's work emerges from his chicanx upbringing along the border between Arizona and Mexico. He uses performance, intervention and installation as processes for deciphering sound histories and intertwined identities.

A discussion and listening session of Errances with Chantal Dumas, an unmissable Quebec sound artist, composer and adept field recordist. She creates works for radio, installations, docu-fictions and sound designs and composes.

An Interview with Grant Smith and Dawn Scarfe from Sound tent about the Reveil project, a collective production by streamers coming from a variety of locations around the earth. Each year at the Dawn Chorus day, the Reveil broadcast picks up feeds one by one, tracking the sunrise west from microphone to microphone, following the wave of intensified sound that loops the earth at first light for 24 hours.

A listening session comprised of Elated Night by Darcy Colin Adam, Improvisation at 5.05 AM by Philippe Battikha, Quelle heure est-il? by Frédéric Danos and Deny a Request by Julia Drouhin.

Call in or come visit us to discuss your insomnia, anxieties or other thoughts with artist collective Audio Placebo Plaza who offer a live audio placebo to start a healing process with you.

To call in:
+1 587 328 1099 (international free call)
Provide zoom codes:
Meeting ID: 873 2680 6686 #
Participant ID: 892645 #
Passcode: 039602 #

Conceived by artists Erin Gee, Julia E Dyck and Vivian Li, Audio Placebo Plaza (APP) focuses on expanding intersectional feminist methods of healing, emotional labour, collaboration and community into sound art. APP considers 'placebo' as a complex, open and optimistic conceptual framework for work that embraces irony, play and co-performativity in psychosomatic sound art. Through performance and interactivity, APP engages with members of the community to discuss these topics.

With works composed in churches at night: Span by Morrisneri (Jen Morris & Stephane Neri) and Kunstkultur, Oratorio and Chiesa, pieces from the album Ambien Church by Blake Hargreaves.

Celestial frequencies converge in an ethereal sonic journey, as DIY bioplastic lutherie, theremin, crystal radio and poetry merge in a hypnotic exploration of insomnia and deep contemplation.

An experimentalist at heart, self-taught Stephanie Castonguay has become ingenious at her craft by constantly refining her DIY instruments, inviting us into her inventive and captivating audiovisual universe. Rooted in materiality, her approach to sound and circuitry is processual: she dismantles and reuses small, obsolete, barely audible machines to reveal the resonances, glitches and unpredictable sounds that lurk within.

The Correct Time is a sound piece about the time that unites us all. It responds to the precise moment when the sun crosses the earth's equator, when day and night are equal.

Jeff Kolar is a composer, sound artist and founder of Radius in Chicago.

Nicolas Montgermont is a sound and radio artist who explores the physicality of waves in all their different forms. He designs artistic devices that explore the poetic essence of waves: resonance in a volume, the vibration of materials, the richness of invisible radio landscapes, the musicality of interference, antenna sculpture, and territories of listening and broadcasting. He is currently developing works on the relationships between radio art and politics.

Anabelle Lacroix is an independent curator. Interested in nocturnal culture, she focuses on the development of curatorial methods that take chrono-diversity into account. She is a PhD candidate at UNSW Sydney, studying the potential of sound, voice and collective listening as agents of institutional critique in public programing.

A work of “attentive relaxation” between sleep and wakefulness Laure Boer's Late Night Manila explores the particular rhythms of life in city of Manila, Philippines. The piece was created during sleepless nights by the artist.

Multiunstrumentalist and experimental artist Laure Boer creates the unexpected, inspired by many musical traditions and collaborations. As much music as ritual, performance as spell, Boer fittingly describes her sound as witchtronic.

. Night of 7th to 8th July / 9pm - 6am Montréal/Tiohtià:ke (UTC-4) : Live Broadcast
. Night of 8th to 9th July/ 9pm - 6am Montréal/Tiohtià:ke (UTC-4) : Live Broadcast from the exhibition InSomnolence (Agora - Coeur des sciences), open to the public

Contact:

Radio Relays:
. Π-node (DAB+, Mulhouse/Paris - fr)
. Buxton Contemporary (irl, Melbourne - au)
. Radio Bloc Oral (webradio, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal - ca)
. Radio Tsonami (webradio, Valparaiso - cl)
. Station Station (webradio, Paris - fr)

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.

Radio Insomnia is an invitation to listen with insomnia, rather than against it, for the sake of productivity. What does insomnia have to say to us? Why loosen the grip of insomnia when we can tighten our listening? When wakefulness is accepted rather than endured, can night-time radio create links as if we were lying shoulder to shoulder?

Radio Insomnia is interested in the political and poetic forces of waking at night, whether by constraint or by choice. Created by and for sleepless bodies, Radio Insomnia was born of the collaboration between Anabelle Lacroix and Nicolas Montgermont for the exhibition InSomnolence in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.

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

Rejecting the idea that there is such a thing as 'perfect' sleep, InSomnolence experiments with the thresholds of sleep and rest. Through artistic propositions, this exhibition asks how the exploration of a sleeper's subjectivity - the everyday ways in which we navigate time, space, ourselves and others - can help us to reimagine and reanimate the sociability of sleep.

InSomnolence is the result of two years of creative practice-based research led by The Sociability of Sleep, an interdisciplinary research group exploring the equity of sleep, and the social forms of care it requires. Curators: Marianne Cloutier, Aleksandra Kaminska and Alanna Thain.

More information and opening hours:

https://sociabilityofsleep.ca/insomnolence/

Listen in the exhibition the works of:
Jessica Arseneau, Azertype, Philippe Battikha, Ella Bellone, Laure Boer, Kieran Boland, Florence Cherrier, Stefan Christoff & Joseph Sannicandro, Darcy Colin Adam, Eric Cordier & Sig Valax, Frédéric Danos, Mel Deerson, Emily DiCarlo, Kate Donovan, Julia Drouhin, Diana Duta & Paul Haworth, Fugitive Radio, Blake Hargreaves, Girl Head, MP Hopkins, Léa Jullien, Claire Kenway, Jeff Kolar, Celsian Langlois, Yoojin Lee & Giuseppe Termine, Alexandre Moreau, Morrisneri (Jen Morris & Stephane Neri), Ocean Viva Silver, Mikel R. Nieto, Oto Ninski, Nina Pankhaniya, Ana Maria Romano G, Rachel Schenberg & Jordi Infeld, James Schidlowsky, Gaël Segalen, Joachim Séné, Doriane Souilhol, Jonathan Sterne, Colette Tron & Jean-Marc Montera, Hélio Volana, Vamp Acid …