narrowcast house

radio studio / listening space / public program

documenta14
Kassel, Germany, 2016 – 2017

In 2016 I was invited to join the aneducation team of documenta14 as an artist. Formally employed in the informal position of an artist in the context of public education provoked a series of questions and learning trajectories regarding the role and function, positionality and possibilities of an artist as a team member. Responding to this invitation through practice strongly resonated with the curriculum of documenta14’s complex organism dynamically emerging between Kassel and Athens. Navigating often juxtaposing and overlapping agencies and workloads of the artist and team member over the duration of one year allowed for a dreaming up and the manifestation of the two interdisciplinary art projects: Narrowcast House, in Kassel and A-Lethia, in Athens.

My first site-visit of “documenta-Stadt Kassel” took place in 2003 in order to attend a German language course while I was still in a refugee programme. Curious about the dynamics of the hyphen in “documenta-city”, Narrowcast House became a way of practically investigating the multiplex relationship between place and event. Some of the questions that drove the project were Does documenta happen with the city or to the city? How do the city and the event listen to, contribute to and benefit from each other? Can the artists who live and develop their practice in Kassel present their work at documenta?

Located in a disused storefront in Kassel’s Nordstadt, Narrowcast House projected itself into the future as an infrastructural connection and ongoing transmission between Kassel and documenta. Developed in close partnership with local art and cultural initiatives, as well as aneducation’s project House of Commons, Narrowcast House channeled an interactive program of daily “narrowcasts” in the form of listening sessions, performances, presentations on air, screenings, mini-exhibitions, installations, and school workshops.

Enormous gratitude for the invitation and the support: Sepake Angiama. Enormous gratitude for the emergence and the manifestation of the project goes to everyone who took part in this project, specifically to the documenta14 team, documenta14 Chorus and the aneducation team, specifically to: Sepake Angiama , Clare Butcher, Arnisa Zeqo, Elli Paxinou, Alkisti Efthymiou, Byron Kalomamas, Josephine Jong-nan Lee, Ifigenia Papadatou , Juliane Gallo, Amelie Jakubek, Sabiha Keyif, Aiko Okamoto, Jeanne Delval, Claudia Maria Doulou, Yu Yen Lin-Woywod , Andara Shastika, Alexandra Tsipni-Kolaza, Lauri White.

Further links:
Narrowcast House documenta14
Narrocast House Events documenta14