Abandon Normal Devices Podcast Abandon Normal Devices

Welcome to Episode 16 of the Abandon Normal Devices podcast, ‘Yearning for new ways to make and circulate: towards an infrastructure of being longing’. This podcast is a recording of a keynote given by writer, researcher and producer Jemma Desai, as part of our first-ever New Cinema Days in April 2023.
What happens when we use the phenomenology of yearning to appraise our cultural production infrastructure? Not yearning to belong to what we have, but yearning to be longing: to embody a desire for something else? Instead of envisaging ‘resilient’ systems that re-form, adapt and shift, might we be able to imagine systems of transmutation that can hospice old ways of being, led by new practices of longing?What new images might appear? How might they circulate differently? In caring for our longing, what might we no longer accept and what might we fight to care for?
Note from Jemma Desai:
This audio piece is a recording of a performance which took place at New Cinema Days which I called Infrastructures of Yearning. In the live version I spoke over a reel of clips that I had assembled as part of my research.
During this research I was thinking about the invitation to deliver a keynote, and what that meant. I thought about “Keynote” as a sound that might be translated into an image - the first note or the key on which the rest of music plays. If there is a keynote to these images it is one of contradictory desires - yearnings that compete with one another. 
I gather here some moments I had come across or been drawn to where images had been made through desire for change, or movement, or attentiveness. I was drawn to both utopic and more sinister longings and so I gathered clips where images had been made of everyday resistance which felt seismic for those who were there when they happened or when grand historical inequities mingled with moments of celebration or spectacle. Moments where a feeling of yearning was distilled into a filmed clip or performance, and moments where yearnings and desires clashed with each other, creating discordance that appeared harmonious due to the ways that it was performed, the ways it was or was not filmed, preserved, presented or written about. 
The reel showed clips from: A 2018 news report  of a gathering Bollywood actors called Bollywood Shalom where  Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu  recreated the viral 'Oscar selfie'posed with Bollywood superstars as a sign of the 'great friendship' between India and Israel. Ceddo Film and Video Workshop’s The People’s Account (1985)  detailing the way that media misrepresentation suppressed, misrepresented and hindered justice for victims of state violence;  Little Simz performing Heart on Fire, a song about the artists search for freedom and integrity in capitalist and historically racist structures and industries at the EE BAFTA Film Awards 2023 in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales, the charity’s patrons;  actress Shabana Azmi speaking out (to applause and in the presence of the people she directly addressed) at the hypocrisy of the political and artistic establishment at the International Film Festival of India in 1989 shortly after the the murder of a prominent communist playwright Safadr Hashmi; archival footage of Grunswick protestors including Jayaben Desai clashing with the police; the trailer, including press quotes from American and English critics, of Indian director Payal Kapadia’s  A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021), a clip of a domestic workers’ union’s demands as recorded in the Yugantar Film Collectives Maid Servant (1981), sections of musings on geopolitics and belonging in Alnoor Dewshi’s Latifah and Himli’s nomadic uncle (1992) and a 1976 performance of Nina Simone singing I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free. During the Q&A the reel continued to show footage of the M11 Link Road protests in East London, pre-gentrification Hackney including images of activists and places of community significan

Big emotions, spirituality and 90s Noir. Part two of a conversation between Unseen Futures fellow Uma Breakdown and their mentor, artist, writer and musician, Johanna Hedva.

Welcome to episode 15 of the Abandon Normal Devices podcast, and part two of a two part conversation between Unseen Futures fellow Uma Breakdown and their mentor, artist, writer and musician, Johanna Hedva.

Unseen Futures was our first ever artist-led fellowship programme that ran from September 2022 to January 2023 and if you haven’t had a listen to part one of this podcast, we recommend you go back and have a listen.

Please note that there is strong language used in this recording that some people may find offensive.

To read a full transcript of this podcast, visit: andfestival.substack.com


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andfestival.substack.com

Heavy metal, cult films and goth queerness. Part one of a conversation between Unseen Futures fellow Uma Breakdown and their mentor, artist, writer and musician, Johanna Hedva.

Welcome to episode 14 of the Abandon Normal Devices podcast. Johanna and Uma have a number of shared interests, including horror movies and a fascination with California as a location for occult, strange occurrences. 

They also have a similar aesthetic, defining as disabled goth queers whose complementary interests are bound up in big emotions and spirituality, as well as heavy metal and horror films.Uma and Johanna’s artistic connection was cemented during Unseen Futures, and the bond between them is joyfully evident in the recording.

Please note that there is strong language used in this recording that some people may find offensive.

To read a full transcript of this podcast, visit: andfestival.substack.com


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andfestival.substack.com

Unseen Futures fellows Liz Mputu and Julieta Gil talk about humanising the exchange between artist and institution, and the benefits of creating an artistic rider.

Welcome to episode 13 of the Abandon Normal Devices podcast. This is the continuation of the discussion in episode 12, but can be listened to as a stand alone podcast. In this podcast, titled Hundreds of bags of M&Ms, Unseen Futures fellows Liz Mputu and Julieta Gil discuss care and artistic practice, humanising the exchange between artist and institution, and the benefits of creating an artistic rider.

Please note that there is strong language used in this recording that some people may find offensive.

To read a full transcript of this podcast, visit: andfestival.substack.com.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andfestival.substack.com

Artists Julieta Gil, January Miller and Liz Mputu discuss being part of our inaugural creative fellowship, Unseen Futures.

Welcome back to the Abandon Normal Devices Podcast. We took a break from podcasting in 2022 to focus on artist-led projects, and now we’d like to share what we’ve been up to.

This is episode 12 of the Abandon Normal Devices/AND podcast. In this episode we are discussing Unseen Futures, our first ever artist-led fellowship programme that ran from September 2022 to January 2023.

Not Your Usual Fellowship is a conversation between three of the fellows Julieta Gil, January Miller and Liz Mputu. They discuss the benefits of an artist-led programme, how to emotionally fund your creative practice, and how to be yourself in a world where artists often need to present a polished version of themselves.

Please note that there is strong language used in this recording that some people may find offensive.

To read a full transcript of this podcast, visit: andfestival.substack.com


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andfestival.substack.com

This week’s conversation connects across the oceans with Indonesia-based curator Ignatia Nilu, exploring ideas behind the presentation of Radio Ensemble at AND Festival. Radio Ensemble invites UK and Indonesian sound artists and composers to perform together as an ensemble across parallel time and space, broadcast in both Indonesia and the UK. The ensemble combines analogue and digital technologies to connect multiple players; musicians, sound artists, composers and programmers from the UK and Indonesia in a speculative performance. Each of the ensemble players are guided in the performance by an auditive score composed by Indonesian composer Gatot Danar.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andfestival.substack.com