Three Transmissions from a Carceral State

2024
Performance with voice and prerecorded sound, 120 min.

Three Transmissions from a Carceral State is a two-hour performance and radio broadcast that engages with the history of imprisonment in Upstate New York. Developed during a residency at Wave Farm in Acra, NY, the piece premiered at the WGXC Catskill Studio in 2024. The first hour derives from a practice of listening to the electromagnetic and acoustic environments of active and decommissioned prisons in Wave Farm's vicinity. A composition of field recordings and radio static serves as a backdrop to a reading of a 60-page script culled from recordings of radio communications between prison guards. The second hour is a mixtape of excerpts drawn from interviews and archival radio broadcasts highlighting the analysis of imprisoned people and abolitionist organizers working in the region today. Evoking the prison as a physical structure and a discursive site, the performance listens to its past, present, and future in an attempt to imagine imprisonment's afterlife.

Three Transmissions from a Carceral State was produced during an artist residency at Wave Farm.

Exhibition History

2025
Radiophrenia, 87.9 FM, Glasgow, UK; simulcast on Resonance 104.4 FM, London, UK

2024
Three Transmissions from a Carceral State, WGXC Catskill Studio, Catskill, NY, and WGXC 90.7 FM; rebroadcast in From the Transmission Art Archive, 2026

Press

Galen Joseph-Hunter, “Keith Sanborn and Hans Kuzmich.” Afternoon Show. WGXC 90.7 FM, October 16, 2024.