XMTR Festival: Across The Sea

Camilla Hannan (AU, 2025)

27 min

A guided headphone audio work led by the artist along the promenade and beach at St-Leonards-on-Sea. Across the Sea is a sound walk by Australian audio producer Camilla Hannan, created especially for this year’s XMTR Audio Arts Festival.

Part soundscape, part sonic correspondence, Across the Sea is an audio love letter between two communities of ocean swimmers — one in St Leonards-on-Sea in the UK, the other in Williamstown, Australia. Over three months, swimmers from both sides of the world and in contrasting seasons, recorded and exchanged voice notes capturing their daily ocean rituals: the slap of bouncy waves, the pull of strong currents, icy dawn plunges, glimpses of seahorses and dolphins. These recordings trace a shared rhythm of immersion — not only in water, but in place, routine, and kinship.

Camilla Hannan is an Australian audio producer, sound artist and field recordist. Her art and radio works have been exhibited, performed, installed and broadcast in Australia and internationally.
Underlying all her work is a deep fascination with the nature of the sonic environment, how we listen to that environment and the ways in which this listening impacts on our micro and macro worlds. She is interested in the ways in which we can transgress the traditional division between audience/listener and performer/broadcaster, seeking to build connections between communities and individuals through sound.

Produced by Camilla Hannan

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XMTR Festival Selects: 1001 Stabs

Lina Prestwood (UK 2025)

8 min

To be born in Gaza is to be born already bleeding.
Before you take your first step, a blade is pressed gently, precisely, against your soul, the first of 1001 stabs

Produced by Lina Prestwood
Written in August 2025 by F. (Gaza) 
Read by F. and Lyana Mansour (USA)
With thanks to  Fatima Zahra Gahzli (Turkey)

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XMTR Festival Selects: Moving House, Moving Kitchen

Lucy Dearlove (2023)

35 min

This clip is a new mix from oral history recordings from 2013, Mary Hooper made for 'Last Station' a large scale Touring Project looking at the cultural history and legacy of UK Floating Lightships, devised by herself and Elise Liversedge .

Produced and presented by Lucy Dearlove for the podcast Lecker

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XMTR Festival Selects: Lightning Refuge

Kristina Loring (US 2025)

4 min

What are the gems that lie beneath the wounds? Ruha's family escaped violent riots in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1983, just three months before she was born.  They were targeted because they were Tamil, the minority. Their successful survival could be seen as a string of coincidences, the result of deep human connections. Or was it the result of supernatural intervention?

This piece was created for The Golden Tape project by Kristina Loring, a mixtape of human essence where artists share their secretive and beloved pleasures, grief, ritual, and desires that they want to keep hidden from AI commodification.   

Producer by: Kristina Loring
Voices: Ruha Devanesan and AJ Devanesan 

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XMTR Festival Selects: Majd’s Diary: 2 Years in the Life of a Saudi Girl

Sarah Kate Kramer (US 2016)

25 min

Majd Abdulghani is a young woman from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who dreams of becoming a scientist — while her parents hope to arrange her marriage. Radio Diaries sent Abdulghani a recorder — and she ended up chronicling her world for over two years.

Produced by Sarah Kate Kramer and Joe Richman
Assisted by Nellie Gilles
Edited by Deborah George and Ben Shapiro

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XMTR Festival Selects: Transition

Kalli Anderson (US, 2023)

10 min

A multi-voice, experimental documentary featuring excerpts from SIMULA, an 8.2-channel sound installation by apè Aliermo and mixed and mastered by Rose Bolton. This composition includes sound recorded during three anonymous births and electromagnetic sound recorded in a hospital during one of the births. The voices you hear speaking are Redzi Bernard, Becky Kenna, Amy Macfarlane and Andrea Gummo.

Produced by Kalli Anderson, apè Aliermo and Rose Bolton
Edited by Eleanor McDowall

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I Dream Of Water: The Well, The Bay, The Sea

Susanne Lambert (UK 2025)

7 min

This is part of a body of work is about people's relationships with water, based around a set of audio recordings from various people Suzanne knows. She asked contributors to share something about a place of water they have strong memories of, or connections to, and to say something about what feelings are evoked in the place.

Susanne set the audio messages within new compositions (including found sounds and field recordings) in different ways to create a series of pieces. She has combined improvised open passages (drums/clarinet/piano/synth) with more considered and formulated sections, in an attempt to echo, mirror and juxtapose the words, and build imagery around the stories shared.

The series will eventually also include factual information, alongside the personal connective elements, as an opportunity to examine the diverse and sometimes contradictory elements of our human relationship to water.

Produced by Susanne Lambert aka Suzi Lamb

Listen to the collection

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Baring All in The Name of Art

Minnie Harrop (UK 2023)

13 min

What does it mean to bare all in the name of art? Life drawing is standard practice in the art world. Artists come together to draw a model who poses completely nude, often directed by a tutor. With nudity practically taboo in Western society, it is one of the few instances in which nakedness is normalised. For many people, life drawing is an unfamiliar concept, and life modelling completely unimaginable. This programme is unique in connecting the experiences of artists, models and tutors, and illuminating a community that is perhaps under-explored in documentary media.

Produced by Minnie Harrop
Music: 'Slow Jam 1' by King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard

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Guided Hypnosis: Cabin Pressure

James Trice (UK 2025)

MajDuckworth · Guided Hypnosis: Cabin Pressure

4 min

A surreal guided hypnosis cassette to ease your fear of flying. Intercut with the hypnosis, we hear from a survivor, someone who lives with a deep, sometimes paralysing fear of flying, that lets you know you're not alone.

Best heard with headphones. No passport required.

Produced by James Trice

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I Just Needed Something A Little Bit... More

Charlotte Petts (UK 2024)

Charlotte Petts · I just needed something a little bit... more

12 min

An immersive, multi narrative piece about how it feels to walk a really, really long way. Featuring voices from others who have gone before her, Charlotte tries to find some peace and a sense of her own path on the South West Coast Path.

Created as a final piece for In the Dark audio course. With huge thanks to Nina Garthwaite, Laura Mitchison, Lorna Flutter and Verity de Cala for their ears and input.

Produced by Charlotte Petts

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