Future Artefacts FM

Future Artefacts FM

Future Artefacts FM is a bi-monthly talk show hosted by Nina Davies, Niamh Schmidtke and Rebecca Edwards, featuring speculative fiction audio works such as radio plays, short stories, fictional interviews and podcasts. Follow our instagram @futureartefacts.fm for more news, updates and details about the show. Thanks for listening, Nina, Niamh and Rebecca

  1. 17 hr ago

    Phantasmagoria: The Mandjet by Sarah Al-Sarraj

    In this episode, we speak with artist Sarah Al-Sarraj about her new speculative audio work The Mandjet. Framed as a fictional radio phone-in and set in a near future reshaped by rising waters and contested borders, the work uses humour, satire and political tension to explore how environmental crisis transforms our relationship to land, water and community. We discuss the process of building this imagined world, the use of radio as a storytelling device, and the complex figures who inhabit it. Our conversation also explores the histories that underpin the work. Using one of the main protagonists, the leader of a radical water-autonomy movement, as a starting reference, we talk through the drainage of the English Fens and the resistance of the Fen Tigers as well as touching on contemporary debates around water privatisation, environmental justice and political dissent. Finally, we consider how folkloric actors, whether real or imagined, collective memory and ideas of borderlessness shape both the narrative and Sarah's wider artistic practice. This mini-series is commissioned by Henry Moore Institute as part of the programme for their exhibition Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age, open 15 May - 30 August 2026. Actors:  Rosemary Moss  ELLC Raza Tariq Ashirbad Roy Yasmin Alrabiei Special thanks:  Siegrun Salmanian Angelina Radakovic Davis Galvin  The opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the Henry Moore Foundation, its trustees, employees or associates Bios; Sarah Al-Sarraj (b. 1997) is a visual artist and cultural worker based between Pittsburgh (US) and London (UK). Her work centers on worldbuilding as a creative and critical process, where painting and immersive technologies are understood as portals to other worlds. Predicated on the belief that our world was designed in service of imperial violence, she builds new lifeworlds rooted in land, spirit, and ancestry. Currently working with game engines, she is interested in appropriating military simulation technologies to build uncolonisable realms inspired by Global Majority knowledge systems and emerging quantum thought.  Her creative practice is informed by working in movements, at organisations such as Forensic Architecture, the Inclusive Mosque Initiative and Healing Justice London. She is inspired by the tangible material potential of visionary practice in global liberation movements and she occasionally lends her hands to illustration and graphic design for various groups.  Broadcast through @rtm.fm Artist @ssaarraahj  Host @influential_bro @_rebecca.edwards @niamhschmidtke  Music @joemoss1 @jtre_v

    1 hr
  2. 8 Jun

    Phantasmagoria: Hallucination Stream by Sahej Rahal

    In this episode we talk to Mumbai-based artist and UCLA assistant professor Sahej Rahal, whose practice spans sculpture, video games, AI simulations, film, and painting. Starting from three excerpts of Rahal's text Hallucination Stream we discuss how the micro-fictions of Simulation, Story and Rumour explore caste as a mythology sustained through narrative, hallucination, and political performance. Across the conversation, Rahal reflects on ghosts, digital folklore, cooperative gaming, and the role of art in confronting systems of power. This mini-series is commissioned by the Henry Moore Institute @henrymooreinstitute as a part of their program for their exhibition Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age, open 15th May - 30th August 2026. Bio; Sahej Rahal (born 1988, Mumbai, India) is an artist and assistant professor of Design Media Arts at, UCLA. Rahal is primarily a storyteller. He creates counter-mythologies that interrogate narrations of the present. This myth world takes the shape of sculptures, performances, films, paintings, installations, video games, and AI simulation programs. Drawing upon folklore, prophecies, archaeological conspiracies, hidden histories, and occult manuscripts, he renders scenarios where the fictive and the real begin to converse, at the borderlines of myth and memory. Voice actor Nivedita Nair Sound designer John Trevaskis Broadcast through @rtm.fm Artist @sahejrahal  Host @influential_bro @_rebecca.edwards @niamhschmidtke  Music @joemoss1 @jtre_v www.futureartefactsfm.com

    1 hr
  3. Phantasmagoria: An Introduction with Sean Ketteringham

    11 May

    Phantasmagoria: An Introduction with Sean Ketteringham

    We’re so excited to launch a new mini series commissioned by Henry Moore Institute @henrymooreinstitute as a part of their new exhibition Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age.   In the first episode we talk to the exhibition curator Sean Ketteringham. Moving between folk art histories, sculptural practices, affect theory, hauntology, horror, and memetic culture, we discuss what functions as contemporary folklore, questioning what sculpture becomes when it exists through circulation and interaction rather than static objects.    This mini-series is commissioned by the Henry Moore Institute @henrymooreinstitute as a part of their program for their exhibition Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age, open 15th May - 30th August 2026. Bios; Sean Ketteringham is Assistant Curator of Exhibitions at Henry Moore Institute and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. His first book, Architectures of Identity: Imperial Decline and the Homes of English Modernism, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2027. From May 2026, he will join the University of Birmingham as a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow on a new project titled 'Postwar Folk'.    Henry Moore Institute's Galleries, Research Library and Archive of Sculptors' Papers are free to access and open to all. As part of the Henry Moore Foundation, they are a hub for sculpture, connecting a global network of artists and scholars to ensure the art form is accessible and celebrated by a wide audience. Discover their changing programme of historical, modern and contemporary exhibitions and events in Leeds city centre, where Henry Moore (1898-1986) began his training as a sculptor. Guest Sean Ketteringham Hosts @influential_bro @_rebecca.edwards @niamhschmidtke  Music @joemoss1 @jtre_v Broadcast through @rtm.fm

    57 min
  4. Can You Call A Touch

    6 Apr

    Can You Call A Touch

    What does it mean to amplify a collective voice through collective performance? How do traditions like bell ringing persist, evolve, or disappear, and what do strange histories reveal about their cultural significance? Emily Roderick is the fourth and final guest of our ‘as a chorus’ mini series, sharing personal anecdotes, recordings, and sounds inside bell towers from her ongoing project Can You Call A Touch. In this episode, we focus on her research around bell ringing, a deeply social, intergenerational practice that sits somewhere between music, ritual and public communication. Interwoven with familial conversation, and sounds of the ascent of bells being rung up, and the resonant unwinding of ringing down, the conversation considers broader questions around collective expression using bell ringing as both a personal inheritance and a collective language. We hear how the practice functions as a “village voice,” marking time, signalling events, and shaping a shared sense of place, while also operating as a close-knit, sometimes opaque community. Bell ringers: Steve Roderick Sue Roderick Lynsey Roderick Dave Peacock  Emily Roderick With thanks to Martin and Louise Green at St Michael's Church, Bishops Itchington. This work was made with support via DYCP from Arts Council England. Bio: Emily Roderick is an artist, producer, and facilitator, teetering between 'the serious' and 'the silly'. Based in Berlin, her creative and often collaborative outputs include performance, film, workshops, walks and writing. Curiosity and questions drive her practice across its different lines of enquiry, exploring social space and interaction with non-art audiences and community contexts, using art to create conversation and exchange. Removing barriers to the arts is also a big part of her production work, with a focus on developing accessible and inclusive projects. Artist @emilyhrodders  Host @influential_bro @_rebecca.edwards @niamhschmidtke  Music @joemoss1 @jtre_v Broadcast through @rtm.fm

    1 hr
  5. 9 Feb

    Seaweed in the Fruit Locker

    How can the rhythms of songs incite a crew, family or collective solidarity?  Rhys Morgan is the 3rd guest of our ‘as a chorus’ mini series, sharing 3 queer sea shanties from the project and choir, Seaweed in the Fruit Locker. Using Polari, a gay slang used to declare and protect gay people historically, the choir rewrites and performs historic sea shanties to describe queer lived experiences and histories. Founded in 2022, we speak about Morgan’s role in the choir, how queering shanties is a return to their origins, Credits (in order of appearance); Lion’s Den; Written by Rhys Morgan, performed by Seaweed in the Fruit Locker Hell Cats; Written by Sef Penrose, performed by Seaweed in the Fruit Locker I’ve My Own Suggestions Too; Written by Ben Doney, performed by Seaweed in the Fruit Locker Bio; Rhys Morgan is a queer interdisciplinary artist and curator based in Plymouth, UK. His work explores queerness as an operative in everyday experience and the expectations, possibilities, and limitations of how this is expressed. Being based in the South West of England, Morgan’s work often reflects on the heritage and experience of queer people on the peninsula.  In 2023 he completed the MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, London, being selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries the same year. He recently worked for the National Gallery with conceptual artist Jeremy Deller, as one of four national Assistant Curators to deliver Deller’s 2025 work The Triumph of Art. Artist  @rhys__m Hosts @influential_bro @_rebecca.edwards   @niamhschmidtke  Music @joemoss1 @jtre_v Broadcast through @rtm.fm

    1 hr
  6. 15/12/2025

    Bastard Fields

    What conditions do we gather in? Can this exist without hierarchy, or even a physical space?  Most Dismal Swamp joins the second episode of our mini series ‘as a chorus’, sharing audio extracts from the recent film, The Bastard Fields. A mixtape of 3 sketches, each audio builds on the language of historical preachers, reddit forums and social media commentary. They weave a world which asks about the violence or nightmares that instills our need to come together.  With Most Dismal Swamp, we discuss the mechanics of making shared spaces, how an art practice can parody this by collaging the works of multiple authors into longer ‘playlists’ that become complex and inconsistent worlds (such as the ones we all live through), and a self-cannibalising process built on pattern recognition, outliers in data sets, and the impact of regional specificities in AI models.  We ask how art practices traverse creative production, curation and production to open up space outside of traditional systems and build artistic community both within and around the works being shown. Bio: Most Dismal Swamp is a mixed-reality biome; a place and a practice where a dank miasma of fictions, artists, model worlds, adversarial realisms, external hard drives, camera-tracking data, campfires, opaque rituals, game engines, amateur heresies, visual effects plug-ins, and other animals come together. Emerging from the curation, artwork, and research of Dane Sutherland, Most Dismal Swamp’s multimedia projects involve collaboration and convivial speculation with many other artists. These projects are modular and densely populated, presented across various immersive and bespoke installations and online; Multi-User Shared Hallucinations dredged from the slumgullion swamp of adversarial digital, platform, and neural media. A rigorous ‘acid pessimism’ inspirits the work of Most Dismal Swamp: an acerbic yet playful immersion into the composite hallucinatory lifeworlds, gamespaces, and protocols that make up the hostile architecture of our shared platform-mediated crises. Artist @most_dismal_swamp Hosts @influential_bro @_rebecca.edwards   @niamhschmidtke  Music @joemoss1 @jtre_v Broadcast through @rtm.fm

    1 hr
  7. 22/10/2025

    CHANTER (Aughinish)

    Can choirs be a form of protest, and what kinds of resistance could they provide in the midst of climate crises? Our mini-series, ‘as a chorus’ begins with Niamh Schmidtke’s work, CHANTER (Aughinish). Their 15 minute audio introduces us to an aluminium refinery and it’s impact on the local population. Combining song and audio description, the work brings together its own chorus, inviting us to join their melodies, building from the individual to the collective as our awareness of their injustice intensifies. Together we discuss how the work incites forms of direct action, and the need for collective making. This work was made through the Welcome to the Neighbourhood residency in summer 2025 at Askeaton Contemporary Arts. Askeaton Contemporary Arts is an artist-led organisation based in the west of Ireland since 2006. An ongoing residency programme creates critical cultural encounters in the midst of the Irish countryside each summer, while public programmes and exhibitions in Askeaton and elsewhere over two decades have found innovative public contexts and resilient relationships for new forms of artmaking to emerge. Further resources about Aughinish can be found through https://www.stigmadamages.com/ Voices (in order of appearance); Bernadette Hayes, Inbher Glenn Community Choir, Monya Riachi, Christopher Clery, Grainne Hassett and Akinsola Lawanson. Bio: Niamh Schmidtke (b. Dublin 1997, they/she) is an artist, lecturer and arts facilitator based across London and Limerick. They explore the politics of green washing, economic jargon and the language of democracy through speculation, audio, ceramics and installations, centring intimacy as a form of decolonial praxis. 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. They currently lecture in the School of Architecture, Limerick, with an MFA from Goldsmiths, London and BA from LSAD. Awards include; Agility Award, Material Futures Residency at Cove Park Scotland and the European Investment Bank’s (EIB) Artist Development fund. They have exhibited across Ireland and internationally including TULCA; Salvage Agency, Galway (2024), Pulling Blood from a Stone (solo), Science Gallery Berlin (2024), DARE 2019, Orpheus Institute, Belgium and PULSE, Limerick City Gallery (2022). Their work is held in public and private collections, including the EIB’s permanent collection. They are a member of Lewisham Arthouse artists’ co-op where they co-organise the Graduate Award with Sara Willet. Artist @niamhschmidtke  Hosts @influential_bro @_rebecca.edwards   Music @joemoss1 @jtre_v Broadcast through @rtm.fm

    1 hr

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Future Artefacts FM is a bi-monthly talk show hosted by Nina Davies, Niamh Schmidtke and Rebecca Edwards, featuring speculative fiction audio works such as radio plays, short stories, fictional interviews and podcasts. Follow our instagram @futureartefacts.fm for more news, updates and details about the show. Thanks for listening, Nina, Niamh and Rebecca

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