Voice From Afar
(2022)
Sound Design by Cem Mısırlıoğlu.
Voice from afar is a sound work by the artist Larissa Araz focusing on the famous Kurdish broadcasts of Radio Yerevan.
Radio Yerevan's broadcasts began in 1955, and soon after its launch, the radio station became one of the most important means of communication for the Kurdish-speaking community in the region.
Between the 1960s and the 1980s, Radio Yerevan had a great impact on the Kurdish community in Turkey: the radio's sound waves helped the community create an identity across borders. Portable radios were widespread in the region, and through them Radio Yerevan had found its listeners.
Voice from afar, however, is an abstract sound work that explores radio as receiver rather than transmitter. The artist imagines where these portable radios were: the sound travels between the mechanisms of the radio as an object and tries to recreate the listening atmosphere both physical and psychological between attempts of repression and the cultural resistance that has been passed down to this day in these voices. Voice from afar began with extensive archival research that has led the artist, over the past few months, to imagine and reevaluate the role of radio at that time, but also to reflect on the need to preserve a culture and to question the resilience of people in the present and the freedom of speech still denied today.
Image credit:
Taken from https://ajammc.com/2021/06/13/radio-yerevan-kurdish-culture/
Students of Yerevan State University listening to the Kurdish broadcast in Casimê Celîl’s living-room. On the left: Ordîxanê Celîl (Cemîla’s elder brother), Celîlê Celîl (Cemîla’s younger brother), Sîma Semend, Şerefê Eşir. On the right Êmma Ûsîv, Mecîtê Bişo, Îlîçê Reşîd. 1955 (Courtesy: Celîl family archive).
