Parastatal

Notes from below

Arts EN ↓ 5 episodes

This series brings together the works of artists and musicians whose research, poetics, and sound practices are coupled with an understanding of the below as that which is beneath – the quiet, inaudible yet present. Their work demonstrate how inherited forms and traditions inform lineages, yet are unstable and open to change and adaptation. History, memory and knowledge are re-encoded through art practice and cast across generations and geographies. Notes from Below asks for us to look and listen closer to the cultural and epistemic transfers that occur on micro and macro levels, in personal a...

Author

Parastatal

Episodes

Older than the tongues that named me 30.10.2025 35:11

Bianca Baldi is an artist whose work explores history, meaning, and knowledge production, often through narrative, fiction, and the reconfiguration of historical contexts and events. In this interview, Baldi speaks about her relationship to writing and sound, the documentary image, and narrative. She reflects on how she navigates personal and collective histories of land, colonial exploitation, an...

Corazón de Robota 17.10.2025 47:20

In this episode, Bhavisha Panchia speaks to artist Constanza Piña about her work as Corazón de Robota, her DIY practice of building instruments and synthesizers, and her long-term installation and performance project Khipu / Electrotextile Pre-Hispanic Computer. Piña discusses the khipu as a ‘speaking knot’ and transmitter; how we might think of electrotextile computers; the role of cosmotechnics...

Sketches 23.08.2025 34:47

Bhavisha Panchia speaks to Simnikiwe Buhlungu about her working with sound, how knowledge is moved, recreated, translated and recomposed. She talks about the relationship between the aural and the ocular, listening practices, and some past projects, working with printmaking collective DGI at the Centre for the Less Good Idea, and her solo show at Kunsthalle Bern. The episode features working ‘sket...

My Mouth is a Vessel 04.08.2025 21:40

In this episode, Bhavisha Panchia speaks with artist Ana Paula Santana about her practice working with clay, voice and resonance. The sound commission is titled, My Mouth is a Vessel (2025) and emerges from an exploration of the sonic potential of ceramic material activated purely by air. It is constructed entirely with sounds from ocarinas and ceramic whistles crafted by the artist, brought to li...

Songs of the high dam 02.04.2025 59:25

Gilles Aubry in conversation with Alia Mossalam The high dam of Aswan in Egypt was built from 1960 to 1964. Thousands of Nubian people were displaced in the flooding operation and relocated to other places in Egypt or Sudan. Alia Mossalam offers comments about Nubian songs that relate to this history, between propaganda, nostalgia, guilt, and anger. Alia Mossallam is a cultural historian, educator...