Returning for a fourth edition to CTM Festival, the Radio Lab is dedicated to exploration and experimentation with the hybrid possibilities of combining the medium of radio with live performance.

Mexican artist Julian Bonequi’s winning proposal, "The Death of the Anthropocene," imagines a series of one-on-one encounters between ordinary people and mysterious visitors – mutants, composite human-robot-animals, aliens… – painting humorous yet grim pictures of the future of humanity.

In "Happy New Fear," the second selected CTM Radio Lab work, Rima Najdi aims to explore an environment of anxiety and control via a narrative built around Madame Bomba, a character first created in 2014 when Najdi wore a fake cartoon TNT bomb around her chest while roaming the streets of her hometown Beirut. For this project she will collaborate with musician Kathy Alberici (of Drum Eyes fame) and visual artist Ana Nieves Moya. Light designer Theresa Baumgartner and technical director Federico Nitti will support the project.

This year’s two selected works premiere at CTM 2017, and will subsequently be broadcast via Deutschlandradio Kultur in March 2017. Later in Autumn 2017, these works will be presented by the ORF (Austrian National Broadcasting Corporation) via one of their platforms.

→ More information on the CTM 2017 Radio Lab

The CTM Radio Lab is co-commissioned by Deutschlandradio Kultur – Hörspiel/Klangkunst and CTM Festival, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, the SoCCoS – The Sound of Culture, The Culture of Sound initiative, ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, and Ö1 Kunstradio.

Happy New Fear was developed, in part, at the 2016 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in MENA with additional Post-Lab Support funds made possible from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.