Now in its fifth year, the CTM 2018 Radio Lab is dedicated to exploration and experimentation with the hybrid possibilities of combining the medium of radio with live performance. This year, the Lab will host one winning project commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Kultur – Radio Art/Klangkunst and CTM Festival, in collaboration with ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst festival, Ö1 Kunstradio, and the British music magazine The Wire.

As winner of the CTM 2018 Radio Lab commission, Egyptian producer ZULI i.e. Ahmed El Ghazoly has created a project that presents diverse vignettes of life in Cairo, a grossly overpopulated city that has suffered political unrest over many years. In the artist's own words, the city has “a feeling of a volcano on the verge of erupting but never actually does.” As the fruit of years of sound & video recording, ZULI's piece mixes his own original sound compositions with documentation of conversations held, for example, with taxi drivers, merchants, commuters at the railway station or metro. The piece is presented in the form of a 360-degree sound and video installation, as a part of the CTM 2018 exhibition at Kunstquartier Bethanien.

In this talk, Zuli will discuss his Radio Lab piece and music practice together with Marcus Gammel, head of Radio Art at Deutschlandfunk Kultur.