I Can Fly – new radio piece for WDR

I Can Fly
A Radio Collage by Vicki Bennett
Created for Open Sounds on WDR 3
Premiere Broadcast 25 April 2020 10:04pm – Midnight on WDR 3
Listen to the live stream using the Play button: https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr3/index.html
The WDR 3 archive link is available until 2 May 2020.

People Like Us have created a new radio work for WDR around the theme of flying, premiere is the above date. https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr3/programm/sendungen/wdr3-open-sounds/index.htm

The working process of making I Can Fly involves taking the transcripts from the interview participants, cutting them up and creating the radio work as a text piece first.

Listen to Vicki Bennett answer questions about the piece

What it is to be “grounded” or “elevated”, and how is it that they relate directly to each other? When is not flying defining us more than flying? How much is being on the ground and/or the normal waking bodily situation constituting what it is to be “us”? If we were in space or another planet with different or no gravitational pull how would it change our self definition which is so dependant upon our relationship to objects and people around us of the “normal/home” conscious experience? When is something not reality and when it is not ours (our body, our planet/surface) – how much does this relate to our needing to be on the planet’s surface or grounded in our own mind/body? How often do you think about the fact that we are flying on a planet through space? Why are we all dreaming the same thing?!!!

These are some of the questions being asked around the subject of flying by Vicki Bennett and answered by over 50 participants in this intricate and tangentially edited new radio collage work commissioned by Open Sounds on WDR.

Featuring the voices and recordings of:
Akāshamitra, Atau Tanaka, Ariadne, Austin Rich, Beth Arzy, Cameron Hamilton, Casper Carey, Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee, Dan Bodah, David Cox, Drew Daniel, Eric Kilkenny, Falco Carey, Gaylord Fields, Hearty White, Henry Löwengard, Iain Chambers, Jeff Carey, Jem Finer, Katja Seltmann, Kevin Hamilton, Kim Farrier, Kira O’Reilly, Leanne Bryan, Leech Ernowetz, Leon Clowes, Mark Gergis, Mark Heath, Mark Leahy, Melissa Healing, Michael Newman, Molly Hankwitz, Nicola Battista, Peter Jaeger, Peter Knight, Rahne Alexander, Richard Lindsay, Robert Worby, Runa Kirby Torbo, Seth Horvitz, Sharon Gal, Simon Faulkner, Simon Hamilton, Steven Ball, Tim Maloney, Tom Comitta, Vicki Bennett, Will Edmondes and Yvonne Szymczak

Thanks to all of the above for their generous input, which totally led the way in how the piece was put together.

Mastered by Mark Gergis