Words Archives - Axel Kacoutié

A memoryscape of fatherhood woven between three generations.

Axel Kacoutié · Are You Here by Axel Kacoutié

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?

Axel Kacoutié · Lights Out - Gatekeeper by Axel Kacoutié

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

Listen & subscribe to the whole podcast series

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.

Axel Kacoutié · The Magician By Axel Kacoutié [CLIP]

Interludes is a collaboration between Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié featuring six contemporary artists: Amy Sherald, Ming Smith, Phoebe Boswell, Rahima Gambo, Nnena Kalu and Cassi Namoda.

Framed by the question “What does healing sound like?”, these podcasts offer a visceral connection with the artists’ work. In each episode we weave the artists’ reflections through Axel’s original soundscapes, as a collaborative exploration of their creative experience.

Interludes opens an alternative space. The aim is to soften our tendency to intellectualise artwork, and instead create a sonic texture that is more intimate in its connection with the artist.

Concept & Production by Lou Mensah
Created by Axel Kacoutié

Supported by Hauser & Wirth
Artwork by Erin Tse
Animated by Luke Dye-Montefiore

Ilya Kaminsky, I See a Silence
Ukrainian/American poet Ilya Kaminsky’s work Deaf Republic was heralded as one of the most original books of 2019.

I See a Silence, his new lyric work for Artangel, combined poetry and prose to form the centrepiece of a soundscape for walking the Ness, produced by acclaimed audio designer Axel Kacoutié with the voices of Neil Brennan, Ilya Kaminsky and Zakia Sewell.

Drawn to the singular ecology of the landscape and the flora and fauna that both preceded and survived decades of weapons research, Kaminsky’s ‘poetry of place’ uncannily evoked a landscape of the imagination. The journey began at the Bomb Ballistics building, where a panoramic viewing platform looks out across the vast shingle stretching towards the sea.

Visitors were able to experience I See a Silence whilst wearing headphones and walking between the different buildings on Orford Ness.

A three-part series featuring Axel Kacoutié’s inner world on The Heart

What is the etymology of your being?

Axel Kacoutié offers a vivid personal essay reflecting on language, bilingualism and the curated gaps they have to navigate in order to access their culture and sense of self.

“Your language is a spell, an invocation speaking you into existence, rediscovering the contours of your morality, the fabric of your race and gender and how you relate to others and the world…”

Featuring the voices of the poet Raymond Antrobus and performance artist Rachel Cheung, Axel weaves together the thoughts of a number of multilingual people – including Derick Armah, Irina Niculescu, Mauricio Loseto, Olivia Melkonian, Radhika Viswanathan and Rosel Jackson Stern – into a reflection on living between languages and finding yourself in the gaps.