Category Archives: Promos

Promos for our shows.

Six Pillars – Art & Patronage Summit 2012

Highlights from the Art & Patronage Summit, London 2012. The A&P Summit was an invitation-only event for notable patrons, collectors, arts institution leaders, curators, academics, artists, diplomats and other influential players involved in culture of and for the greater Middle East, including Turkey, Iran and North Africa. Capitalising on the region’s current cultural vitality and socio-political momentum, the Summit aimed to enable both individuals and institutions to collaborate creatively in support of an emerging art scene.

The summit was held on January 12th at the British Museum and on the 13th at the Royal College of Art.

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Six Pillars – The Colonel

An interview with the director of Haus Publishing, who have translated banned book The Colonel from Farsi to English for print. In its native Iran, where the office of censorship has prohibited publication, The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi cannot be read, but now published in German and English, this critical work has been granted a voice in the outside world.

Barbara Schwepcke discusses the difficulties and importance of publishing authors like Dowlatabadi and the role of literature in revolutionary times.

This programme was originally broadcast Monday 12th September 2011 from the ResonanceFM studios.

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The Art of Improvisation

Cousins Adib (UK) and Mehdi Rostami (Iran) take the closeness of their family ties into the realm of improvisation, where trust and understanding between musicians is paramount to success. Prior to a London performance we talk to them in the studio about the preparatory process for an improvising musician, the instruments they play – the relatively new shurangiz – and their ambitions for the future of their duo, split as they are between Iran and UK.

We sample some of their sublime music in the show, but nothing can compare to a live performance where the players literally take you on the ‘journey’ with them. Buy the CD here.

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Six Pillars – A Lebanese State of Mind

Curator of the 2010 Lebanon Pavilion at Venice Biennial, writer and curator Georges Rabbath lays out ‘A Plot for A Biennial’, an interactive happening following Lebanon’s official retraction from the Venice Biennial, 11.

At the Sharjah Art Foundation, Georges explains how T H E S T A T E O F M I N D project at this year’s biennial will make a transferable collection of artworks for any place where the world of art has become, he quotes ‘a zoo’.

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Free Lab Radio – My Kind of Climate

The first half of Free Lab Radio, July 26th 2011 a mid-summer’s Saturday night in the studio. Tracks that lead us to gently dance off the heat at varying paces. Tracks like ‘Naturally Stoned’, ‘Call Me Hung Up’, ‘You’re My Kind of Climate’ and ‘Holiday in Congo’ an even one by the queen of lusty lament: Janis Joplin. Have a listen…

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Free Lab Radio – My Kind Of Climate by Fari

Six Pillars – Wael Shawky

The Path To Cairo – Shawky

Ahead of his forthcoming talk at Delfina Foundation we’ve pulled out some audio from Emirates March Meeting 2011 where Wael presented his work on the crusades from an eastern perspective, as depicted through marionettes on film. One part of the quartet of film retraces events unfolding in the four years between (1096-1099) and which played a key role in subsequent historical developments, shaking to the core the Arab world and its relations with the West. Shawky was somehow given permission to use 200-year-old marionettes from the Lupi collection in Turin and was inspired by The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf, written in 1986. The book by Maalouf, a Lebanese writer, examines the historical points of the Crusades by going back to Arab historians and their writings, most of which have never been considered by historians in the West, although Maalouf does also reference some of the most acknowledged Western sources and studies and aim to give, finally, a balanced view to this too-long-one-sided episode in the history of humankind. Wael lives and work in Egypt.

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Six Pillars – Nobel Peace Prize Winner: Shirin Ebadi

Dr Shirin Ebadi, the First Iranian woman, indeed Middle Eastern woman, to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, spoke at SOAS on 2 February 2011 on ‘The Role of Women in Promoting Peace in the Middle East’.

Here she discusses the women’s movement in Iran and the difficulties she herself has faced in standing up for human rights in Iran.

This was originally broadcast on Six Pillars to Persia as part of a longer show, on Resonance 104.4fm.

Thanks to Marina Khatibi and Tom the engineer.

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International Women’s Day March – London 2011

Women for Women organised a march from the Millenium bridge to Royal Festival Hall led by Annie Lennox. Fari Bradley spoke to some of the groups and individuals taking part.

Groups featured are: The Soroptimists, London Feminist Network, Refugee Council, Afghan Aid and Object.

This podcast also includes the speeches which took place at the end of the march, with Annie Lennox, Bianca Jagger, Lynne Featherstone (someone is shouting “get off the fence!” during this!), the highest positioned woman on the Afghanistan Refugee Council in Afghanistan, Helen Pankhurst from Care International (descendant of Emmeline), Berra Kabarungi, Natasha Walter, Judith Wanga, Liz Morgan-Lewis (The Soroptimist president), Sophy Ridge (Sky blogger), Cherie Lunghi.

Lynne Featherstone, and more.

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Six Pillars – Pearls on the Ocean Floor

This Torture
Why should we tell you our love stories
when you spill them together like blood in the dirt?

Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor,
…or a fire we can’t see,
but how does saying that
push us through the top of the head into
the light above the head?

Love is not
an iron pot, so this boiling energy
won’t help.

Soul, heart, self.

Beyond and within those
is one saying,
How long before
I’m free of this torture!

(by Hafez, C14th)

American director Robert Adanto visits the UK while making his new film. Pearls on the Ocean Floor is a documentary looking at Iranian women artists, born both before and after the revolution, inside and outside of Iran. The narrative is made up of images by the featured artists and other female Iranian artists, and the women speaking to the camera, which affords the film a certain honesty and directness.

The film is screening at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Russell Square with a panel discussion on March 7th 2011, 7-9pm, all welcome.

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Six Pillars – The .Com Father

On a visit to the UK, the founder of the largest website for Iranians in the world, Iranian.com visits the studio. Jahanshah Javid devotes his life to the website, known for its user generated content, and the catch-phrase ‘nothing is sacred’. Here the interview moves into other topics with interviewer Fari Bradley playing devil’s advocate on certain issues to scuffle up a debate.

After all, that’s what comment led content is about these days….

This show was originally aired on 104.4FM in February 2010