SpokenWeb Podcast

S5-Episode 7

ShortCuts Live! Talking about Listening with Moynan King, Erica Isomura, and Rémy Bocquillon

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June 3, 2024

Produced by
Katherine McLeod

SUMMARY

In this month’s episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast, ShortCuts is taking over the airwaves.

ShortCuts is the monthly minisode that takes you on a deep dive into archival sound through a short ‘cut’ of audio. In this fifth season, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod has been presenting a series of live conversations recorded at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium – and in this full episode, we’re rolling out the last of those recordings. You’ll hear from Moynan King, Erica Isomura and Rémy Bocquillon. You’ll also hear the voices of our then-supervising producer Kate Moffatt and our then-sound designer Miranda Eastwood, who was there behind-the-scenes recording the audio and who joins in the conversations too.

Listening is at the heart of each conversation, and each conversation ends with the question: What are you listening to now? That ends up being quite an eclectic playlist and do check the Show Notes below for links.

If you like what you hear, check out the rest of Season Five of ShortCuts for conversations with Jennifer Waits, Brian Fauteaux, and XiaoXuan Huang. And, of course, this month’s episode with the longest ShortCuts yet: “ShortCuts Live! Talking about Listening with Moynan King, Erica Isomura, and Rémy Bocquillon.”

SHOW NOTES

TRACE at Theatre Passe Muraille

Steve Roach, Quiet Music 1

False Knees, Montreal-based graphic artist drawing birds talking

Éliane Radigue

Kishi Bashi, “Manchester.” (Did you catch that this song is about writing a novel and Erica had just talked about novels? Not to mention the bird references. There are many more Kishi Bashi songs to listen to, but linking this since we played a clip from this one in the episode for these serendipitous reasons!)

00:01	SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Song:	[Instrumental music overlapped with feminine voice]
		Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.
00:19	Hannah McGregor:	What does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb podcast, stories about how literature sounds.
		[Music fades]
		My name is Hannah McGregor–
00:37	Katherine McLeod:	And my name is Katherine McLeod. And each month, we’ll be bringing you different stories that explore the intersection of sound, poetry, literature, and history, created by scholars, poets, and students and artists from across Canada.
		In this month’s episode, Shortcuts is taking over the airwaves. Shortcuts is a monthly minisode, or short episode, distributed on the same podcast feed. Produced by me, Katherine McLeod, Shortcuts takes you on a deep dive into archival sound through a shortcut of audio.
		And it wouldn’t quite be Shortcuts without the Shortcuts intro. So, let’s press play on the music and begin.
01:23	Shortcuts Theme Music	[Electronic music begins playing.]
01:27	Katherine McLeod:	Welcome to Shortcuts. In season five of Shortcuts, you’ve been hearing Shortcuts Live, conversations recorded at the 2023 SpokenWeb symposium.
		For this episode, we’re rolling out the last of those recordings. You’ll hear from Moyen King, Erica Isomura, and Rémy Bocquillon. You’ll also hear the voices of Kate Moffatt, our then-supervising producer. And you’ll hear Miranda Eastwood, who is there behind the scenes recording the audio. Miranda even jumps into the conversation from time to time.
		Listening is at the heart of each conversation, and each conversation ends with a question: What are you listening to now? That ends up being quite a playlist and do check the show notes for those links.
02:22	Katherine McLeod:	If you like what you hear, check out the rest of this season five of Shortcuts. There, you’ll find the other Shortcuts live conversations from that same symposium. You’ll hear Jennifer Waits talking about the magic in the archives of college radio stations and Brian Fauteux on widescreen radio. Yes, widescreen radio. And Xiaoxuan Huang speaking about “hybrid poetics” and much more in that conversation.
		So, without further ado, here is the longest Shortcuts episode yet: Shortcuts Live, Talking About Listening with Moynan King, Erica Isomura, and Rémy Bocquillon.
03:04	Shortcuts Theme Music	[Music fades away.]
03:10	Kate Moffatt:	So, hello and welcome to an episode of Shortcuts Live. I am recording this with Moynan King at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium at the University of Alberta.
		Moynan, thank you so much for joining us today.
03:26	Moynan King:	Oh my gosh, thank you for having me.
03:28	Kate Moffatt:	Yeah! Um, oh, and I should introduce myself quickly because this is not the voice people usually hear on SpokenWeb Shortcuts. I am Kate Moffatt, the supervising producer, stepping in for our intrepid usual host, Katherine McLeod.
		So, to get us going here, Moynan, would you just introduce yourself for us briefly?
03:47	Moynan King:	Yeah. My name is Moynan King. I’m a theater artist, performance artist, writer, you know, sometimes academic. I’m doing a postdoc at Western University, and the subject of my postdoctoral studies is “Queer Resonance.” So, I’m exploring the concept of sound as queer, queerness as sound, within communities and also within performance practices and art in general.
04:24	Kate Moffatt:	Incredible. Yeah. I cannot wait to chat and hear more about this. But I think we’ll kick off by listening to what you’ve brought for us today.
04:33	Moynan King:	Sounds good. So, for the listeners, it’s about a minute and 20 seconds. [Overlap from Kate: Perfect.] So, we’ll just have a listen.
04:42	Audio Recording:	[Audio of harmonizing voices starts playing]
06:09	Moynan King:	I guess that’s where it stops. There’s just a bit of dead air at the end.
06:14	Kate Moffatt:	Wonderful. The listeners won’t be able to see this, but I had to literally put my hand on my chest. I was feeling that in my chest while I was listening. That was so fantastic.
06:26	Moynan King:	Thank you.
06:27	Kate Moffatt:	Yeah, I was gonna say, tell us, what we were just listening to?
06:29	Moynan King:	Okay. So, this is a track called “Ghosts,” and it’s a composition by Tristan R Whiston from a show that Tristan and I co-created called “Trace,” that we started to develop back in, oh my gosh, 2012.
		It started as an installation performance. We toured it across Canada. So we went to Regina; I know you’re from Saskatchewan. [Overlap from Kate: I am]. In 2015, we went to Regina, Yellowknife, Whitehorse, and Montreal. There’s someone else in our booth from Montreal. [Miranda Eastwood laughs]
		And then we put it away, put it in its massive storage cases, and then Theatre Passe Muraille just asked us to remount it. And when we did that, we turned it from being an installation into a play. So, we tore it apart and put it forward. [Overlap from Kate: Wow.]
		And, so, what you’re listening to here is a track composed by Tristan Wiston; composed by him and of him.
07:32	Moynan King:	So, Tristan is a trans singer, performer, community activist. And over the course of his transition – that is over the course of the period during which he started taking “T” [Referring to Testosterone] – he recorded his voice almost every day, repeatedly singing the same songs and, you know, talking and singing and kind of expressing himself into this recorder and then also singing repeatedly over and over these songs.
		And one important thing to know about Tristan is that prior to transition, he was an incredible soprano singer. And so had one of those perfect high-pitched voices. And for many, many years, Tristan and I worked together in a group, Toronto-based group called “The Boy Choir of Lesbos.”
		And, so, we used to, there were a bunch of us, and we would dress as boys and we would sing in, you know, the harmonies of an Anglican boy choir. [Overlap from Kate: Right.] And so, we would sing and that was just sort of part of the collaborative history of Tristan and I. [Overlap from Kate: Incredible.]
		So, Tristan came to me, and I think it was around 2011, and said, “I really wanna do something with these tracks. I wanna do something with all this material that I have.” And he’d already, then at that point, done a podcast. Well, you know, I guess at that time we didn’t call it a podcast. I think it had a different name, right? [Laughs]
08:57	Kate Moffatt:	An audio essay. A piece–
9:00	Moynan King:	Yes, yes. An audio essay. Thank you.
9:03	Kate Moffatt:	Yeah, you’re welcome.
09:03	Moynan King:	–called “Middle C,” and that was with the CBC [The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] – I mentioned that because I believe it’s still in the CBC archives. But he brought it to me because he wanted to do something more experimental with it, something less linear.
		So, we started to work with all these tracks. And so, we did like tons of listening over, you know, a long period of time and kind of compartmentalize things. So, the important thing to know about that track, and in fact about “Trace” the show, is that all of the sound is made from Tristan’s voice–
09:38	Kate Moffatt:	Wow–
09:38	Moynan King:	And so a lot of the sounds that you hear in this track are fragments taken from different periods, different stages of his transition. And one of the big discoveries we made with, originally working with these tracks – and to be clear, Trey Justin is the composer. [Overlap from Kate: Okay.] So, but in a way maybe I, you could kind of call me a “doctor.” A “compositional dramaturg,” you know, because we worked so much together on the creation of the show, and those compositions were being created at that time. But so just to be clear, this is Tristan’s composition, but that I was involved in the process of it. And so yeah, that’s what you were listening to.
10:21	Kate Moffatt:	Wow. That’s fantastic. And I’ve already got so many questions around things like the amount of audio that you end up with, like the recordings that become almost like an archive of sorts, that you’re then kind of like working with and engaging with, you know.
		I just think that’s so, so interesting. Wow. Okay. I don’t even know where to start with this. I feel so delighted. So I guess, and I would love to kind of tap into a little bit of that kind of collaboration that you were talking about. I’d love to hear more about that and maybe to think a little bit too about kind of like the role that listening is playing in that I feel like, you know, when it’s multiple people, at multiple ears, and especially working with that much audio. Anyway, I, anything there, that you would like to kind of speak to? I feel like that’s so rich.
11:13	Moynan King:	Yeah. It’s so interesting because I think just to address the topic of collaboration, you know, that it’s a collaboration. This piece, “Trace,” is a collaboration, you know, first of all for Tristan with himself [Laughs], you know–
11:30	Kate Moffatt:	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah–
11:31	Moynan King:	–With all of his selves, you know, over time. [Overlap from Kate: Totally.]
		And then of course with me and, also thinking about collaboration and, artistic collaborations, Tristan and I like to say we’ve been working together since the late 19 hundreds. And because I think saying it that way gives you a sense of the depth of our collaboration and the amount of time and how much we have both changed in many, many ways. And also, how we have not changed in many other ways. You know?
12:06	Kate Moffatt:	That’s such a gorgeous way to think about it.
12:08	Moynan King:	So, when we, and so when we were, when we created the first piece and, so it’s, again, it’s called “Trace.” And we are the co-creators of it. He kind of takes up certain roles and I take up other roles, but we always developed the thing together. You know, we really had a vision of creating this very immersive piece. And I still love that style, and I’m really committed to that style, like immersive installation, performance, that sort of stuff.
		But when Theater Passe Muraille, which is a theatre in Toronto, it’s a very old theatre. It’s been around since I think the 1960s. And the space is certainly conducive to certain kinds of performance, but it’s very much a, like theatre, you know, with an audience and a playing space–
12:56	Kate Moffatt:	Yes–
12:56	Moynan King:	And so, what was exciting for us as collaborators was when Theater Passe Muraille approached us to remount – and you can’t see the air quotes, but I’m doing them [Laughs] – remount “Trace,” we just said “Yes.”
		Because, you know, coming outta the pandemic, we’re like, “Oh God, great. Yes. Like, let’s just do a show. Oh, yeah.” You know, everything has been so crazy, and you all know what I mean.
		So we just said “yes.” And then of course, at our first meeting, we were both like, “Yeah, but we’re not gonna do the same show” [Laughs]. We’re not even [Laughs], we’re not even gonna tell Theater Passe Muraille because we don’t want any questions. We just wanna do what we wanna do. But the important thing to understand, I think, about this piece, in terms of its like thematic, and this is very much connected to the topic of collaboration and community and the concept of becoming, this is something we were working with a lot that it’s an ongoing process of inventing and reinventing yourself, you know?
13:57	Moynan King:	And this idea of like coming out, which is something we do over and over and over again, you know. And there’s a line in the new “Trace” where Tristan’s talking about his sister’s gender reveal party for a child, and then he says “I, nobody ever threw me a gender reveal party. I have to do it myself all the time.” [Laughs]. You know, kind of…And so this idea, it says, connected to this. And so these themes of, these taking the themes of Tristan’s unique experience as a performer and as a singer, and then kind of applying them to broader experiences and to the idea that, to ideas that are familiar to everyone, then that is that non…that stasis is counter to life. That, as long as we are alive, we are changing, and we are becoming. We–
14:54	Kate Moffatt:	Never stay the same–
14:54	Moynan King:	Yeah. And so the piece had to change too, because the last time we had performed it prior to this was 2015, and we had changed.
15:02	Kate Moffatt:	Absolutely. [Overlap from Moynan: You know?] Okay. And actually, that was the next question that I wanted to take up was you talked about changing it from an “installation” into something.
		And it was interesting ’cause as you were, as you were telling us, you even were using your hands to indicate how you had to kind of “break it down,” and you moved your hands in a sweeping motion, and then you were like, and then you pushed away from yourself. You said we had to put it forward, right? [Overlap from Moynan: Yeah.]
		You had to really reorient yourself [Overlap from Moynan: Yeah.] for the piece. And I thought that was so interesting ’cause to go back, even to my own, like my hand going directly to my chest, like a couple of seconds in, I was like, I could feel it in my chest and then I could feel it in my mouth and it was somehow just this extremely embodied listening experience.
		So I would love to hear more about what that was like, having to think about the ways in which this piece and the show itself even like that, it’s just the embodiment of the archive that’s creating it. And the process that it was. And anything I did this last time, I very, I’m good at asking twisty questions. So anything there that you’d like to take up? I’d love to hear more about.
16:07	Moynan King:	Well, I think there are a couple of key things that you brought up there. And one of them is that shape, changing the shape of a piece. And, for the listener that, yes, when I was talking about the installation, I kind of moved my fingers into sort of circular motion to sort of indicate like a space within which…And then when I talked about the theatre as Kate said, I put my hands and pushed away. So it’s like putting something out towards the audience so much, and I’m directly addressing you.
		And so changing the shape of a piece changes the fundamental quality and essence of the piece. Right? [Overlap from Kate: Yeah.] And then I’ll, I’d like to also talk about the archive a little bit more after that. [Overlap from Kate: Please. Yeah.]
		But when we decided to do that, just to sort of give you a bit more information, there is some stuff online, which I can give you a link to some of these sounds, are online if anybody wants to listen to more of them.
17:09	Moynan King:	But, the idea we started with was this idea kind of an idea of Tristan walking through a forest of his own voices. [Overlap from Kate: Wow.]
		You know, you have in your studio here the YSM5s [Yorkville Sound YSM5 are compact powered studio monitors] beautiful speakers. We had 10 of those. When we created the piece, you know, we first showed it in the summer of 2012 and then toured it in 2015.
		When we did that, we had to hire someone to create custom software for us in order to channel the 12 different tracks to 12 different speakers. Sorry, 10, 10, sorry, my numbers come from another iteration. But anyway, so the 10, the 10 speakers, and of course now you can just do that on QLab [QLab is a cue-based multimedia playback software], right? Like, it’s like, and so interesting just in terms of change and time and how the technology has changed along with us, and how in 2012 we were so cutting edge, you know?
18:09	Kate Moffatt:	Right, right–
18:10	Moynan King:	And now basically it’s something anybody can do if you can have 12 if you can own the 10 speakers [Overlap from Kate: Right, right.] [Laughter] and the cable to get them, not a small thing to do. [Overlap from Kate: Yeah, yeah.]
		Not a small thing to have access to those things. So we were really working with this idea of change and, a lot of the key songs that Tristan was singing over and over as his voice changed were very water-related. Okay. So one of those, the “Waters Wide,” and the other one is called, I think, called “I Am Sailing.” And so interesting. And so we used that theme, and we created kind of a beach scenario, and we had these three huts, and one of them was sort of Tristan’s “Command Central,” and he operated the entire show.
18:56	Moynan King:	At some point in our development rehearsal process, I remember coming into rehearsal one day and just saying to Tristan, “You have to do everything.” So it’s like, it was like, I, you know, we were creating the piece together, but then when it actually came to the performance, he had to control everything.
		And I feel like that was really connected to the thematic of it, that it was, everything was coming out of his body and that this environment represented his whole body. And then he was kind of like the homunculus, if you know, that you would know that term as someone who studies that era. [Overlap from Kate: Yeah.]
		Anyway, that’s what that was. And then we also recorded, set up booths, and had an interactive element where the audience recorded their voices, too.
19:44	Kate Moffatt:	That’s very cool.
19:45	Moynan King:	So trying to share with the audience this experience that Tristan had of sitting and recording your own voice. And so we set it up with like fragment sentence fragments and ask people to finish them. So we have this incredible archive segue. Here I go segue.
19:59	Kate Moffatt:	Yes, segue. That was beautifully done.
20:02	Moynan King:	Voices from across the country of people completing the same sentences. And it’s a massive archive. And we use it, we use it in Toronto at the end of the show, so we finish the show with it.
		But I feel like there’s another thing there. It’s, and I don’t know, [Overlap from Kate: Yeah. Yeah.] it’s untapped. [Overlap from Kate: Yeah. Yeah.]
		I don’t know what it is. So then when we went to do the second iteration, or no, sorry, the latest iteration, because really even in 12 to 15, there were a number of iterations and turn the show out. So again, I’m pushing my hands out in front of me to, for an audience. Early on in our developmental discussions, we started thinking about a lot, about time and change and how much we’ve changed and our archive. So then we reached back further into history prior to, you know, Tristan’s transition in the end of the “Boy Choir” into the deep, into the “Boy Choir” archives.
20:53	Moynan King:	So we used that material.
		And so in 1997, we had done a production, the “Boy Choir of Lesbos and Lord of the Flies.” So we did a production of “Lord of the Flies.” [Overlap from Kate: Oh, wow.]
		And we luckily have this incredible VHS [Video Home System] tape of it. So, you know, I mean, back when we were doing VHS, we were like, “Oh my God, it’s not film,” [Laughs]. And now we’re like, “Oh my God, it’s VHS, it’s a VHS,” [Laughs].
		So that’s really exciting. And so we brought in these archives of the “Boy Choir” and integrated these images with this new material. And then in the process of that, at some point, once we decided to bring in the “Boy Choir,” we thought, “Oh, we need a new choir. We need to make a new choir.” And we need to make a choir that both Tristan and I could be in. So we created this non-binary choir that we then called the “Epic Choir of Trace Land.” [Overlap from Kate: Wow.] And so the show, our show in Toronto ends with the “Epic Choir of Trace Land,” and we plan to keep the “Epic Choir” going, actually. So–
21:58	Kate Moffatt:	I’m obsessed with this. I love that so much. This is incredible. And just, you’re talking and I’m like, I’m almost getting, I’m getting goosebumps. Because this is like, you’ve got so many different kinds of archives happening here. And like, intersecting and almost like creating a new one. And I just think this is, it’s so rich, it’s so the possibility, everything here. Oh, wow. And the embodiment and the, oh, all of it. It’s so good. Okay. Last question to wrap up here. [Overlap from Moynan: Okay.] I wanna ask [Overlap from Moynan: Yes.]: What you’re listening to now, like either at the conference or just kind of generally what’s, what are you listening to?
22:34	Moynan King:	So interesting, because that was the question you asked me. And the reason I brought this was because our show just closed on Sunday. [Overlap from Kate: Oh, yeah.] So all I’ve been listening to is “Trace,” right? Like, we just closed. So I’ve been listening to that.
		And then of course, you know, I don’t, I presented at the conference yesterday, and right now I’m engaged in a process of creating what I call “meditations.” And so other than “Trace,” I’ve been listening to meditations and to meditative music. And of course, working on my own material with that. But like last night when I went to bed, I listened to Steve Roach’s “Quiet Music 1.” Highly recommend it [Laughs[, go on YouTube, “Quiet Music 1,” play it quietly. Yep. 1970s experimental electronica. Yep. So that’s it.
23:38	Kate Moffatt:	Incredible. Moynan, thank you so much for sitting down and talking to us about this today and for playing the clip. This has just been such a fantastic conversation. Thank you again.
23:48	Moynan King:	Thank you very much, Kate. Thanks for listening and thanks for inviting me. It’s wonderful to be here.
23:53	Kate Moffatt:	[Background ambient music starts playing] Yeah. This was so good. Thank you. Alright. Yay.
23:58	Miranda Eastwood:	Yay.
23:58	Kate Moffatt:	Okay. I’m gonna hit stop, which I did last time.
24:00	Music:	[Ambient music plays faintly]
24:10	Kate Moffatt:	Okay. So, hi and welcome back to Shortcuts. This is another episode of Shortcuts Live at the University of Alberta.
		We are here for the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium, and we are actually sitting outside if you can hear [Laughs] if you can hear some of our wonderful ambient sounds right now.
		It has been so insanely beautiful and hot this week. I think it’s about, what do we say, 27 degrees right now? It’s warm.
		My name is Kate Moffitt. I’m the project manager and supervising producer of the SpokenWeb podcast, stepping in for our usual host and producer, Katherine McLeod. And I am so excited to be joined by Erica Isomura today. Erica, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?
24:52	Erica Isomura:	Sure. Hi everyone. Thanks for having me. My name is Erica, and I am a writer, a poet, and currently an MFA [Master of Fine Arts] student, actually at the University of Guelf. I like drawing, gardening, being outside. I currently live in Toronto, but I was born and raised in New Westminster in Vancouver.
25:17	Kate Moffatt:	I love New West [Laughs].
25:20	Erica Isomura:	Yeah, and it’s really great to be here in Edmonton in Treaty Six Territory. I’ve been really enjoying being here.
25:25	Kate Moffatt:	It’s been so, so lovely. It’s been a great week. Amazing. Okay. Well, we’re gonna listen to something. I don’t know if you wanna say a couple words or if you wanna just, are we gonna jump in?
25:33	Erica Isomura:	Let’s just jump into it, and we can chat about it afterwards. So hopefully the volume is up on this. [Wrong audio plays] Oh, sorry. That’s the wrong audio [Laughs].
25:45	Kate Moffatt:	That’s okay.
25:48	Erica Isomura:	That was cool, though, [Laughs]. [Overlap: That was it.]
25:52	Audio Recording:	[Audio recording of chirping and nature sounds]
26:39	Kate Moffatt:	Wow. Thank you so much. Please tell me what we were just listening to. I feel like there are so many cool layers here because we’re currently sitting outside. What was that?
26:45	Erica Isomura:	That was recorded on a road trip that I took with my sibling to Prince Rupert. We drove from our hometown all the way up north to a three-and-a-half-day drive to Prince Rupert, which is on the northwest coast.
		And that audio was of a group of European starlings that were gathered on this, under this dock, on this building where I think a ferry comes in. And so there were so many birds. I hadn’t seen so many like European starlings gathered together before. And it was really cool to see a bird that was also familiar.
		Since being here in Edmonton, I’ve actually seen magpies for the first time. I definitely took some video footage of them on my way to the campus, and I hadn’t seen them before. So it’s always exciting to see new birds and also cool to see birds that you’re familiar with.
27:44	Kate Moffatt:	I wanted to ask, ’cause I know I attended your fantastic plenary panel yesterday. And thinking about the ways in which I guess I just, I’ve been thinking about kind of like nature and nature sounds all week and how we listen to it and how we re-listen to it after when we record it, and kind of how we end up being these sort of like mediators between that sound as it’s originally happening and then, and listening to it later.
		So, can you speak a little bit more, maybe just about listening generally? It could also be the role of listening in what you pick, choose to record, pick up, and how you plan to revisit it or your research.
28:22	Erica Isomura:	Yeah. Well, it’s interesting ’cause I don’t really, it’s interesting being at this conference ’cause I don’t really consider myself a sound artist. So I haven’t considered myself in that way before. Although I did this, this sound project that, you know, we brought to the conference this week. But then when I stopped to think about it, there’s such a sonic, important sonic quality to poetry and to writing and storytelling. Which is much more, you know, I do identify with those things as a writer, and I’ve been thinking a lot about non-visual ways of engaging with stories this past semester, I was TA-ing [Working as a “teacher assistant”] an “Intro to Storytelling,” “Intro to Creative Writing” class for first-year students. And a lot of new writers are really focused on visual cues in their work. [Overlap from Kate: Interesting.]
		Like, “so-and-so” sees this, it’s green, it’s round, you know like they’re not, there’s like a textural element that sometimes it’s a bit flat. [Overlap from Kate: Wow.] And so that was a big part of revising with students who were learning how to engage with creative writing was bringing in sonic qualities, bringing in texture and touch, and you know, feeling–
29:40	Kate Moffatt:	That there’s more than just looking–
29:41	Erica Isomura:	There’s more than just looking. I was thinking about that while I was listening to this sound and trying to think about what sound I’d want to share because I’m trying to work on a project that engages with drawings and writing.
		So it’s a graphic project that follows the road trip that my sibling and I took and engaged with a lot of the land-based history. And I was thinking, “Okay, how will I, how will sound be part of this visual project, in a book?”
		A book is so, it’s just, it’s just different, you know? Like, people sometimes will include “SoundCloud” links to listen to “spoken word” in their books or, you know, “QR codes.” But sometimes I find myself not, it’s not necessarily the most organic of processes to pull your phone and scan it or a hundred percent. You know, even if you go on a CD with the book, sometimes you just kind of ignore it. Right–
30:35	Kate Moffatt:	Especially now you’re like, where’s the closest CD player?
30:37	Erica Isomura:	Totally. Right. So I’m not an audiobook person. I do listen to podcasts, but yeah. So it’s interesting to think about it. Like just different qualities that bring us into place and space and that interests me.
		So most of my sound recordings in my phone are probably more nature-based, though I do find the intersections of, like urban landscape noises really interesting. Just the mixture of things that you’ll hear on the street. [Overlap from Kate: Absolutely.] Or even, you know, the crunching of footsteps when you’re out in the forest. There is, you know, thinking about our relationship like I guess the Anthropocene or our imprint on the land. And, you know, the sounds that we make, too.
31:27	Kate Moffatt:	Yeah. A hundred percent. And it’s so interesting, as you were talking about that, it started to make me think about like, how we capture things. Because yeah, I guess my question is kind of like having that recording from that trip, like how does that take you back as opposed to a picture of you or like a picture of those birds under that underpass. Yeah. Anything there that you would like to respond to? Please Go ahead.
31:50	Miranda Eastwood:	Actually, could I jump in? [Overlap: Yeah. Oh yeah.]
		Just because you’re talking about, you know, you get a CD in a book, and you’re not, you’re not probably gonna listen to that or a link or a QR code. It disrupts the relationship that you have with reading because that’s what people agree to when they open a piece they’re reading.
		So the, even the idea of bringing in a different form of media is almost not, well, you break that relationship, I think, and the idea of sound and going to listen to something like specifically for sound, you’re engaging in a different relationship to whatever text you’re exploring. Right. Which I feel like that kind of pulled into your question about materiality and how like, I guess what your, what your general thoughts on those different types of relationships are.
32:37	Erica Isomura:	Yeah. Well, I think that what I was thinking about when we, when I, when you made that comment, Kate, and this relates to this too, is thinking about how do you represent sound on the page. Right. You know, like I think in poetry, there’s such interesting things you can do with white space, like… [Overlap: oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.]
		Writers and poets just talk about staring at a blank page. Just the possibilities of form and prose are typically like nonfiction prose, and fiction prose. It’s very blocky and chunky and there isn’t a lot of space for that creativity necessarily. Maybe there is, and maybe I’m not thinking about it. We did have a presentation with Jordan Abel a few nights ago, and I think he’s doing some interesting work with novels and space on the page for sure.
33:28	Erica Isomura:	Like disrupting the genre. But yeah, I think there’s so much opportunity for that in poetry. And I think as I’m drawing more and thinking about graphic forms there is the opportunities to visually kind of represent sounds and sound effects on the page, through shapes and through visual cues and kind of blending things in a way that’s really interesting.
		There’s a comic artist I love on Instagram who actually lives in Montreal. I’m not really, I’m blanking on his handle, but he draws a lot of birds and like, they’re very funny comics. And bird, I think–
34:11	Miranda Eastwood:	I know who you’re talking about ’cause I think I’ve seen these bird comics before of these birds just kind of doing their own thing–
34:18	Erica Isomura:	Do you know their name?
34:19	Miranda Eastwood:	His name? No, I don’t.
34:19	Erica Isomura:	He was just at TCAF [Toronto Comic Arts Festival], but I didn’t make it to his table. But they’re funny, they’re hilarious. They’re great conversations. Like the birds are talking about us.
34:28	Kate Moffatt:	Oh, I have seen this. Oh. And I can’t remember the handle either. Oh, wow. How many grad students does it take?
34:33	Erica Isomura:	[Overlap] End of the, end of the–
34:35	Kate Moffatt:	We’ll put it in the blog post for the episode.
34:37	Erica Isomura:	Yeah. But yeah, thinking about representations of sound on a page, you know, and Yeah. The non-human kind of elements. And it’s just so funny to think about what the birds are; the birds are watching us too, you know? Right. We’re not just watching them.
34:50	Kate Moffatt:	Right, right. Yeah. Which even I think absolutely a hundred percent goes all the way back to Spy’s keynote on the first day. Right. Like, talking about that kind of like awareness of what’s around you, and not just your awareness of it, but it’s awareness of you, and how that’s informed and what it’s been informed by. Incredible.
35:05	Erica Isomura:	So I think that the first sound that I actually accidentally played was, it was water from up north, from probably from the Skeena River ’cause I was, I think the previous audio was a clip from a cannery that I had visited.
		I was trying to record some sounds from a tour I did at the North Pacific Cannery, but also, I can’t remember if they had turned on the machine, of the canning machine that was supposed to be on display there, but wow. I didn’t want it to go into the spoken-like tour part [Laughs] for the audio.
		I’m actually really glad that I have some of those clips and I forgot about them until you prompted me to bring a sound clip. Amazing. So it was cool. And I’ll have to definitely re-listen to all those.
35:46	Kate Moffatt:	I love that. Okay. Speaking of listening, I think a last little question here to wrap up this amazing conversation is: what are you listening to right now? Like in your research or just more generally, what are you, what are you listening to?
36:00	Erica Isomura:	I’m listening to, like, kind of these like non, like a lot of music without vocals as I’m writing. [Overlap: Ooh.] I call them my “coworking,” like my “writing working” playlists. [Overlap: Yeah.]
		I was listening to Kishi Bashi earlier today in my hotel room, and he’s a violinist, kind of like a pop violin. So he loops his violin and sings, and he has a band, and he’s an amazing live performer. Thinking about sound–
36:34	[Sound of Kishi Bashi’s song “Manchester” starts to play]	[Vocals]
		I wrote me a book. I hid the last page. I didn’t look. I think I locked it in a cage. I wrote a novel because everybody likes to read a novel…
36:54	Kate Moffatt:	Erica, thank you so much for sitting and chatting with us today outside in this insanely warm weather. Thank you again.
37:01	Erica Isomura:	Thank you, for, to both of you for hosting me.
37:05	Kate Moffatt:	Perfect. Yeah, we got a little windy. [Overlap] I liked our little what was going on there.
37:11	Erica Isomura:	[Voices fading] Do you think it’ll be okay?
37:13	Music:	[Musical Interlude]
37:17	Kate Moffatt:	Really just gonna be a conversation where we chat about what we listen to. Did you have any questions before we start?
37:25	Rémy Bocquillon:	No, I think I just go with it.
37:28	Kate Moffatt:	Okay. Amazing. Has it been recording this whole time?
37:31	Miranda Eastwood:	Yeah.
37:31	Kate Moffatt:	Okay. I love that because, at one point, we need to capture that little recording where I’m like, “Here’s like a quick and dirty version of what Shortcuts is. I’m gonna say hello, and I’m gonna be like, Hey, I Kate, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be great…
		[Voice fades]
37:49	Kate Moffatt:	[Music fades]
		Hello, and welcome to an episode of Shortcuts Live. We are at the University of Alberta for the 2023 SpokenWeb symposium, which we’re at the, we’re on the last day. And it’s been super incredible. We are very excited to have been here. But this is Kate Moffatt, the supervising producer and project manager for the SpokenWeb podcast, stepping in for our usual host and producer, Katherine McLeod. And today, we’re sitting down with Rémy Bocquillon. That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. Beautiful. can you tell us a little bit about yourself, Rémy?
38:19	Rémy Bocquillon:	Yeah. Well, thank you for this podcast. And I mean, the whole symposium has been amazing. So that’s, that’s a great experience. I’m so tired, but [Laughter] yeah. So, I am not in sound studies at all. I’m in sociology and sociology theory based in Germany. I work with sound quite a bit as kind of how to use sound, and sound art in my methods of how to do research. So not an analysis of sound, but more like how to do it. And for the SpokenWeb, I have been the artist in residence. So I’ve been very fortunate to prepare a sound installation, which is just across here.
39:01	Kate Moffatt:	So, yeah. Yeah. We’re currently sitting in a big room in the, I think it’s the Cameron Library. We’re right beside the Digital Scholarship Center where the institute is taking place.
		Amazing. Thank you so much. We’re so excited to chat. We’re gonna listen to something. Did you wanna, did you wanna play that for us? Do you wanna say anything about it first?
39:17	Rémy Bocquillon:	Yeah, so just pay it, and then we can chat about it.
39:21	Kate Moffatt:	Perfect.
39:24	Audio of Êliane Radigue	[Audio of Êliane Radigue speaking in an interview: Il est tiré le temps prolongé, le temps ralenti, pour étirer le temps, il faut le ralentir. Et c’est sans doute ce qui permet de mieux saisir ce qu’il contient dans le présent. En fait, la grande vérité du temps, je crois, est celle de s ‘inscrire aussi totalement que possible dans le présent.
		Et la meilleure façon de bien pénétrer le présent, c’est de s’y installer. Et forcément une autre durée intérieure à ce moment -là s’établit, une durée qui est presque sans limite. Et on tente de faire cela avec les sons, c’est un petit peu un artific, parce que le son a son discours, son mode de déroulement temporel.
		Mais là, effectivement, je triche sans doute un peu en étirant les choses. En fait, une pièce ou une œuvre, quelle que ce soit le nom que vous lui donniez, peut -être une mesure serait peut -être une seule mesure, mais une mesure en l ‘occurrence de 80 minutes, puisque c’est la durée de Psi 847.
		Le refus de l’anecdotique, je crois que c’est très simple, ça ne m’amuse pas. L’anecdote ne m’amuse pas. Et en fait, je fais des choses pour mon plaisir. Merci d ‘avoir regardé cette vidéo.]
40:51	Rémy Bocquillon:	Yeah.
40:51	Kate Moffatt:	Wonderful. Tell us like, what was that, what were we, what were we just hearing?
40:54	Rémy Bocquillon:	So, it’s an interview from Êliane Radigue who was, she’s still active, is a composer, an electronic musician. She’s one of the pioneers in electronic music and drone music. She’s done a lot of music with synthesizers.
		This recording is from the 70s, 76, 77. It was broadcast on French radio back then, and today it came out as a record. So that’s, that’s actually–
41:27	Kate Moffatt:	Like today, today? [Overlap from Rémy: Today, today. Yeah.]
		Like May 5th, 2023, today. [Overlap from Rémy: Exactly. Yes.] Wonderful. That’s so cool
41:32	Rémy Bocquillon:	That was perfect. Like on point for this kind of event. And in this particular recording, she’s talking about time and her perception of time and how, in the stretching of sound, in drone music and electronic music, she has the feeling to manipulate time or to be in time to be in the present. So that’s, that was, yeah. Yeah. It’s, and I love her voice. I love how, how she, she talks about sounds. That’s fascinating. Yeah.
42:00	Kate Moffatt:	Yeah. I’ve kind of got goosebumps from that. That’s, that’s amazing. That sounds so cool.
		Can you give us a bit of, is that kind of what she’s talking about in the interview? I was gonna ask like, is she very much discussing kind of like this, that idea of like stretching time, this is that what’s in the interview?
42:16	Rémy Bocquillon:	Yeah, exactly. So she starts out by saying like, that to stretch out time and to play with time, you have to slow it down. And this idea of “slow down” and like that’s at the heart of what we do drone music, for instance.
		But she did it in the seventies. She was really working with a synthesizer and very meticulously and had this kind of hard work and technique of trying out and having the pieces go on for hours. And a bit later in the interview, she even says, well, one piece can, it’s like one measure, one meter, but it’s like one that lasts 80 minutes. And so that’s, so that’s how long she takes to unfold the sounds.
43:01	Kate Moffatt:	That’s so wonderful. For the listeners, you can’t see, but Rémy likes using his hands just to stretch, to stretch out time, to stretch out the measures. It’s, it’s been, it’s very, it’s very wonderful.
43:10	Rémy Bocquillon:	Yeah. Sorry, it’s not very radiophonic [Laughs].
43:12	Kate Moffatt:	No, it’s fantastic. That’s so wonderful. And I guess I would love to hear more about how, I guess how this, maybe these ideas that you’re, that are in the interview are intersecting with like your own research and kind of your own work, but also maybe in particular like this interview and like listening to this interview.
		Like, does that intersect too kind of with, ’cause obviously you’re very excited about it, and that’s fantastic. I’d like to just kind of hear more about how it maybe intersects with your own work.
43:40	Rémy Bocquillon:	Yeah. So that’s a very interesting question and very compelling on certainly many levels because there’s this personal – yeah, I mean, as I said, a lot of her voice – and I think she because she’s such a pioneer in electronic music… I mean, she has been, in the fifties, working with people like Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henri, who were in France and beyond the first to do musique concrete and this kind of stuff, to integrate different sounds into music – and she was with them and then continued to work on longer forms. And then from the 2000s actually moving away from this synthesizer and doing more acoustic stuff. And that’s where probably it resonates more with my own work because she works a lot with this kind of connection between the instruments, the bodies, and how, in the unfolding of a piece of the music, you have this kind of network happening. A combination of different actors and bodies crafting the sound and crafting the music together how gives you a different sense of experience and of the feeling of space of time. That’s what she’s talking about actually, but really in the performance – how to do this on the spot.
44:57	Rémy Bocquillon:	And that’s what I found very interesting in how, through sound, you have this kind of connection between different bodies… And I call this as kinda modulating this kind of spacetimes through sound. You can just, yeah. Stretch it out and have this kind of very particular moment in time.
45:24	Kate Moffatt:	That’s fantastic. And it’s so interesting to me too that you brought this interview where she’s talking about it rather than potentially bringing a piece like you were mentioning, like there’s that piece that’s 80 minutes long, but it’s one measure. Is that what you were saying? [Overlap: Yes, yes. Yeah.]
		Obviously, we’re not going to play an 80-minute coupon shortcut, but yeah, I think it’s. I love that you brought this interview clip. So I guess, and you can take this kind of as metaphorically or as literally as you’d like, but when you listen to this clip, what do you hear?
45:57	Rémy Bocquillon:	Oh, I hear a tremendous artist talking about the practice. And that’s something rich is very interesting because so often you don’t talk about the practice that much. And she’s doing that in such a way that you can see how she’s, or you can hear, how she’s working and how she’s very much like going into the material, really going into the synthesizer, into the sound. And, and I think that’s why these kinds of interviews are very interesting.
		Because she – and I mean, that was on, so it’s in France culture, which is public radio, and this kind of experimental composer. So that’s interesting as well back in the seventies to have this kind of composer talk about their practice, and to have this person in a very maned world, like experimental music, like talk about her practice and having her practice also recognized and acknowledged. So that’s very important as well.
46:54	Kate Moffatt:	Wow. And what do you think, like, would it be different to read about the process versus hear this interview where she’s talking about it? Like, is it different to listen to it than to read it?
47:07	Rémy Bocquillon:	That’s probably where you could actually tell me that because you, you maybe don’t understand that much. You said you don’t speak French, but you hear a voice–
47:18	Kate Moffatt:	What did I hear? [Laughs] –
47:20	Miranda Eastwood:	I could jump in on that actually ’cause I was thinking just the way, the way she was speaking slow, not “ma” [The speaker uses the sound “ma” as a vocal filler], that kind of… I haven’t listened to her music obviously, but like to me, it almost sounded like she was mirroring, echoing, paralleling the process of that music and the way she was speaking about it, which I thought was very like, now I wanna listen to that music because of the way she spoke about it. And the process was like in the way she was vocalizing the process almost that, sorry that was my thought–
47:55	Kate Moffatt:	No, that’s lovely. And for, for listeners, that’s Miranda who’s been hopping in occasionally on these Shortcuts conversations, and I’m so, so, so glad they are. Miranda is our audio engineer and sound designer for the podcast. Yeah.
		And I guess for me too, like Miranda, you have some French, well, lots of French; you know French. Whereas, whereas I don’t, and I feel, but I feel like I, I did hear very much the same, the same thing, like it, I I don’t think I’d realized beforehand that, that they were a composer or a musician.
		But you do kind of get that, that sense. It did also feel very – I’m trying to think of the right word – rich, but also almost very like, internalized. Like it was something that I could just felt. So almost intense I guess, about the way that she’s speaking and, and the way that, that she was describing, I guess her, her process. It did sound very musical somehow.
48:51	Rémy Bocquillon:	Yes. The pace, I mean. as you said, intense. And towards the end of that clip she’s very opinionated. She says the anecdote doesn’t amuse me, so just don’t do it. So that’s why she’s focusing on this long form and taking the time and yeah, the way she has this kind of rhythm in her voice. That’s fascinating. Yeah. I mean, you can listen to her for hours.
49:02	Kate Moffatt:	Just don’t do it [Laughs].
49:03	Rémy Bocquillon:	Interesting. So that’s why she, she’s focusing on this long form and taking the time and yeah, the, the way she, she has this kind of, of rhythm in her voice. That’s fascinating. Yeah. I mean, you can listen to her for hours.
49:16	Kate Moffatt:	I could feel it in my mouth while she was talking. Yeah. Like I could feel it in my own mouth. Yeah. There’s like a, when she was speaking a musical quality. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was something very embodied about it.
49:25	Rémy Bocquillon:	And I don’t know if it’s, because back then in radio you had a different kind of rhythm in interviews as well. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because nowadays it’s very fast-paced and you have this kind of difference. So maybe it plays as well. But you see on YouTube you have this kind of documentary where she shows what she’s doing and that’s interesting because of this kind of modular synthesizer and she has this kind of stop clock. And so she’s very much in tune with this idea of time keeping time, but also letting time unfold. And that’s, so in a way that’s totally embodied in her practice, but also how she talks.
50:02	Kate Moffatt:	That’s in the interview. Fascinating. I was gonna say, there’s this taking of space of time to, to give it that rhythm, which as you say might be radio conventions kind of changing and then shifting, but regardless that it’s, that it’s there and we hear it and respond to it. Right?
50:16	Rémy Bocquillon:	Yeah, totally.
50:17	Kate Moffatt:	I’ve got two, two kind of final questions. And they’re very much related.
		One of them is to just, I’d love to hear like a little bit more about how listening both to things like interviews, like process or this, but even in like your own work ’cause you were saying that you’re a sociologist more than like a sound study scholar, but that obviously sound is there. So like, I’d love to hear about the role of listening in your own, your own research, in your own work.
		And then maybe just finish off with like, you know, what you’re listening to right now, whether that’s research related or, or otherwise
50:50	Rémy Bocquillon:	Oh yeah, [Laughs]. Okay. Yeah. So listening in the work is, I think, central in different kinds of different aspects. I mean, in this kind of symposium we have been listening to a lot of things, to a lot of people, to a lot of sounds. And that’s the main aspect of it. Just to listen to each other, I think. And, but in sociology, more directly, it’s also about how to listen and how to actually leave space again to different voices and to different actors and maybe actors we don’t actually hear. So how to work with that.
		And how to leave space to those voices, to work with them in different ways. And that bridges to a kind of different way of doing sociology, which is making those kinds of new associations through sound, and which is also a different relation to knowledge and how knowledge production and distribution which is political, which is critical, which is ethical, I think, as well in how to bring this kind of multiplicity of actors, whatever you want to call them, in sounds, and having them like inhabit and then like move, move around.
52:05	Rémy Bocquillon:	And what I’ve been listening to, oh, that’s a hard question–
52:08	Kate Moffatt:	[Laughs].
52:09	Rémy Bocquillon:	Yeah. I mean, on my way here, I’ve been listening to a very well renowned French rapper called Orelsan, it’s one of his albums, like last year, two years ago, is very popular, so it’s not like “underground dark things,” [Laughs], but there’s this one song, I don’t know, it just like lift my mood and I love it. So [Laughs], yeah. Taking the bus. That’s what I was listening to.
52:34	Kate Moffatt:	Incredible. I love it so much. We’ve, we’ve collected quite the little, little almost like a little playlist as we’ve been asking folks what they’ve been listening to. I think we’re gonna have to try and put something together at some point here. This has been so wonderful, Rémy. Thank you so much for bringing, bringing this wonderful clip that I love that it got released today. That feels very serendipitous.
52:53	Rémy Bocquillon:	Thank you. [Overlappinhg] Thank you very much for having and for coming to chat with us. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
52:56	Miranda Eastwood:	Yay.
52:57	Music	[Opera music starts playing]
53:02	Katherine McLeod:	[Low electronic music plays] You’ve been listening to Shortcuts on the SpokenWeb podcast. This episode featured conversations with Moynan King, Erica Isomura, and Rémy Bocquillon. Thank you for all of your sounds and your time. Thank you to Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood for putting such care and energy into recording these interviews onsite at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium.

		If you’re at this year’s SpokenWeb symposium, there will be a live recording of an episode coming up as part of the symposium events. So if you’re there, do attend and be part of the audience. Either way, stay tuned, and we’ll look forward to hearing that episode on this feed next month.
		The SpokenWeb Podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada.
		The SpokenWeb podcast team is: supervising producer Maya Harris, sound designer James Healy, transcriber Yara Ajeeb, and co-hosts Hannah McGregor and me, Katherine McLeod.
		To find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say “hi” on social media. Stay tuned to your podcast feed, and as always, thanks for listening.
		[SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music fades and ends]

Katherine McLeod

Moynan King

Moynan King is a performer, director, curator, writer, and scholar. She was the recipient of a 2020 Canadian Screen Award for her writing on CBC’s Baroness von Sketch Show on which she also made regular appearances as an actor. She is the author of six plays, and the creator of many performances including TRACE with Tristan Whiston. Moynan was the co-founder and director of the Hysteria Festival, the co-director of the Rhubarb! Festival (for four years), and has been the curator of multiple cabaret events including Cheap Queers. As an Assistant Artistic Director and Associate Artist at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre for a total nine years, they developed such works as The Beauty Salon and Bathory among many others. Moynan holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from York University. Her critical writing on theatre and performance is widely published and they are the editor of Queer Performance: Women and Trans Artists (CTR 149), Queer/Play: An Anthology of Queer Women’s Performance and Plays, and co-editor of Sound & Performance (CTR 184) with Megan Johnson. Moynan is currently (until September 2024) a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Western Ontario working with Dr. Spy Dénommé-Welch on a sound-based research project entitled Queer Resonance.

Erica Isomura

Born and raised on the west coast, Erica H Isomura is a poet, essayist, and multi-disciplinary artist, exploring graphic forms and mixed-media art. Her work speaks to a complex relationship with land, politics, and yonsei 四世 Japanese and diasporic Cantonese identity. Erica’s writing has appeared in Canadian literary and independent magazines, including ArtsEverywhere.ca, ROOM Magazine, Briarpatch, The Tyee, XtraMagazine.com, The Fiddlehead, Vallum, and carte blanche, among others.

In 2023, Erica was artist-in-residence at The Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency in Steveston Village, BC. Erica is a recipient of ROOM magazine’s Emerging Writer Award and won first prize in Briarpatch’s Writing In The Margins contest for creative non-fiction. Erica currently resides in Tkarón:to/Toronto, ON. https://ericahiroko.ca/

Rémy Bocquillon

Dr. Rémy Bocquillon is a researcher and lecturer in sociology at the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany. His research interests revolve around epistemic practices bridging the gap between arts, science, and philosophy, which he explores through his own creative work as a sound artist and musician. Some of his latest projects include the publication of his book “Sound Formations. Towards a sociological thinking-with sounds” and the sound installation “in_between”, realised during an artistic residency for the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium at the University of Alberta, Canada.

https://remybocquillon.eu/

Kate Moffatt (interviewer) is a PhD student in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University. Her research interests include British Romanticism, women’s authorship, walking and pedestrianism, and print culture. She is the former supervising producer of The SpokenWeb Podcast, and she is the current co-host of The WPHP Monthly Mercury podcast.

Miranda Eastwood (sound recording) is a game writer and interdisciplinary artist based in Montréal. Miranda holds a master’s degree in English Literature and Creative Writing at Concordia University, where they passionately pursued works of many forms, including the development of a radio drama, several ongoing comics, and the release of a full-length audiobook, and made audio as the sound designer for The SpokenWeb Podcast. https://mirandaeastwood.com/

Katherine McLeod (producer) is an Assistant Professor, Limited Term Appointment, in the Department of English at Concordia University. She is the principal investigator for her SSHRC-funded IDG project “Literary Radio: Developing New Methods of Audio Research.” She has co-edited with Jason Camlot a recent special issue of English Studies in Canada, “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies.” She co-hosts The SpokenWeb Podcast and produces ShortCuts as a series for the podcast feed. https://katherinemcleod.ca/