It includes newscasts in Arabic and English and audio memories.
#Radio silence productions series
The Radio Silence team is hard at work in creating the program as series of collages of interviews with Iraqi Immigrants, musicians and other artists. “One can be in silence and in a state of remembering, one can be in silence with somebody else and know that they are grieving in silence,” said Rakowitz. Hence the performance outside Independence Hall takes on a more urgent and relevant tone. So the speaking of both being present and visible at the seat of American democracy have come to mean and represent very different things for people now,” she said. National policies towards Iraq immigrants and refugees had shifted during that time.”In fact some of the people participating will not use their last names for fear of reprisals in Iraq or their own citizenship status here. “With Bahjat’s death this idea of silence of our host as a ghost changed the nature of the project and Michael became his surrogate voice,” she said. Because it loses his voice more poetic, because the voice of Iraq loses its voice,” Rakowitz said.īut not for long, says project curator Elizabeth Thomas, who collected the materials to create a 10-part series of future radio broadcasts. “When he died the story became more sad and more real. It was a hard blow to all the plans they had put together, he says. Rakowitz had managed to complete only one long day of interviews. The project was underway when Bahjat became gravely ill and died in 2016. Michael Rakowitz whose family is Iraqi, had the idea of recreating Bahjat’s old radio program in exile. He was the voice of authority, trusted and respected. For multimedia artist Michael Rakowitz it all started when Bagdad’s famous broadcaster Bahjat Abdulwahed, often described as the Walter Cronkite of the Iraqi airwaves, decided to leave his war torn country and moved to Philadelphia in 2009.īahjat’s broadcasts were a combination of news, music, and current events. Radio is important for Iraqis and Radio Silence is the voice of the immigrant and exile community in Philadelphia. It is called “Radio Silence” and connects Iraqi refugees with American veterans who fought there. Imagine a large theater set depicting a Mesopotamian Ziggurat, decorated with Iraqi national symbols and you’ll get an idea of the multimedia performance taking place Sunday outside Independence Hall.
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