125 years of Black music-making in Britain. This landmark exhibition will reveal how Black British music has shaped British culture. Spanning four continents and 12 decades, this is a story of excellence and struggle, resilience and joy.
Author: Axel Kacoutié
Welcome to Wandering. A four part series of immersive podcast gallery walks, brought to you by Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié.
Sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.
“As a young man in Birmingham, dealing with the violent, racist and oppressive realities not only of the UK government but also the National Front, he refused to turn the other cheek. Instead he declared that ‘self-defence is no offence’ – a slogan made popular during the fight against the Front in the early 1980s – in his reggae album Back to Roots (1995). This moral and philosophical clarity enabled him to embody a political rage that didn’t fade with age.”
Artists and writers remember ‘the people’s poet’, whose prolific career foregrounded the power of the pen in engaging meaningful social commentary
Interludes: Black Balloons is a new sound installation by Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié now showing at Tate Gallery. Responding to Liz Johnson Artur’s display Time don’t run here, the piece references Artur’s Black Lives Matter protest images and works from her ongoing Black Balloon Archive documenting people in Africa, and of the African and Caribbean diasporas.
Experience Liz Johnson Artur’s work with the ear and body. How does sound change how you see the works? What pulses through you when you see the images, braille and thread?
The soundscape features the voices of Liz Johnson Artur, artists Imogen Faires and Jamel Alatise from Theatre Peckham, and Research and Interpretation Artist Resident, Marie Smith. It includes extracts from Poetry as Protest, Protest as Poetry, a poem by Faires and Alatise responding to the display and performed live at Tate Modern in April 2023.
Visit the installation at Tate Modern, Natalie Bell Building, Level 2 West Room 4, Artist and Society. Black Balloons will play in the gallery at the following times: 11.00am, 12.00pm, 1.00pm, 3.00pm, 4.00pm, 5.00pm.
Interludes is an ongoing sound collaboration between Lou Mensah of Shade Podcast and the audio artist Axel Kacoutié.
Produced by Lou Mensah
Created by Axel Kacoutié
A psychological and spiritual withdrawal from the toxic workplace culture founded on white supremacy.
Original image by Irene Tønnessen
From the Fugitive Episode. Series 34
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Produced by Axel Kacoutié
Executive Producer: Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
It’s not always in a romantic relationship where a heart can break.
How do we grieve in a culture that champions one love over the rest?
Axel Kacoutié attempts to language loss after reuniting with the person who inspired this documentary. Guided by the thoughts and wisdom of friends and an end-of-life practitioner, we hear what happens when we let grief speak.
Featuring the voices of Claire Galligan, Ivor Williams, JN Benjamin, Tej Adeleye, Weyland McKenzie-Witter and Zachary Cayenne-Elliott.
Special thanks to End of Life Doula UK, Tony Phillips, Natasha McAnea-Hill, Jeff Monteen and Maz Ebtehaj
Artwork: Erin Tse
Development Producer: Eleanor McDowall
Sound Design, Music and Mixing Production: Axel Kacoutié
Produced by Axel Kacoutié
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
A memoryscape of fatherhood woven between three generations.
From the Fatherhood Episode. Series 33.
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Produced and mixed by Axel Kacoutié
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
“Somewhere between the narrow entry of Who I am and What I seem to be, lies a vast and nameless place.”
In this transmission, Axel Kacoutié discovers a new sense of self in the cosmologies, concepts and realities of queer and indigenous folks. What are the links between gender expression and our relationship with the Earth? How does it destabilise colonial and capitalist imaginations of what we’re told a gender binary is meant to be?
Featuring the voices of:
Opaskwayak Cree Nation Professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Dr Alex Wilson
Artist Buitumelo Kotekwa
Afro-Taino Two-Spirit change-maker Cleopatra Tatabele
Scholar and Research Assistant Karyn De Freitas
Transmasculine, non-binary scholar and Founder of the Free Black University, Melz Owusu.
Artwork by Erin Tse
Development Producer: Eleanor McDowall
Assistant Producer: CA Davis
Additional Recording: Heidi Chang and Israel Ramjohn
Sound Design, Music and Mixing Production: Axel Kacoutié
Produced by Axel Kacoutié
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
making the invisble, visble by conjuring thought forms about the practice of magic and what it can mean for all of us and especially artists.
All the Names Given as it’s meant to be heard, narrated by Raymond Antrobus
Throughout, the audiobook is punctuated with [Caption Poems] partially inspired by deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim, which attempt to fill in the silences and transitions between the poems, as well as moments inside and outside of them. Direct, open, formally sophisticated, All the Names Given breaks new ground both in form and content: the result is a timely, humane and tender book from one of the most important young poets of his generation.
©2021 Raymond Antrobus (P)2021 Macmillan Publishers International Limited
Original Music by: Axel Kacoutié
Produced by: Eleanor McDowall
Mixed by: Eloise Whitmore