Early fascination of the new fantastic invention of radio was, a fascination of the Ether, a black endless space through which radio waves could travel and where nearly everything could happen. Rikke Houd, who started producing almost 20 years ago, always starts a new radio story by imaging this black space full of possibilities.

What will be the first sound, the first color, the first picture, the first picture, the first rhythm? For Rikke this is the fascination of radio-making, a story coming out of the dark or as Beckett said, “… the whole thing’s coming out of the dark”

Sunday, October 15th, here at UnionDocs we will showcase works by Rikke Houd. She will be joined by friend, collaborator, and fellow audio producer Lu Olkowski (Love Me), for a conversation on radio documentary following the program. 

Traveling in the footsteps of Karen Roos, a young Danish nurse who disappeared on the ice outside the small East Greenlandic town Tasiilaq in 1933.

Winner of the 2015 In The Dark award for audio documentary presented at Sheffield Doc/fest.

THE LIGHT is a story about Pat Herbert founder of the Hurdy Gurdy Museum in Ireland, recalling the time he heard radio for the very first time – told by radio maker Rikke Houd & graphic artist Anthony Calvert in a collaboration initiated by Radio with Pictures and ABC Radio National’s Creative Audio Unit

In a cottage in Ireland, people from many farms gathered in the dark listening to a battery-driven radio. This is a story that parallels the birth of radio with the birth of a young boy who from experiencing radio for the first time and has it transform his worldview.

THE LIGHT premiered at Hearsay Festival in 2015. It was a finalist at the Atom Awards in 2016. 

The Water is a personal audio piece following a pathway at the bottom of a lake. It´s about life, love and loss and the precious water. The original music piece Vattrakallo is composed by Ylva Nyberg Bentancor.

“I dream about the lake. I dream about the water. And in my dream the water becomes time and the time is rising. It fills the days, it turns them into flooded valleys, childhood has become a lake.”

Rikke Houd is a Danish radio maker occupied with real life stories, imagined ones and the sounds and silences that weave it all together. She has been working with Radio, audio documentary making, sound and storytelling since 1998.

Rikke´s award winning work has been broadcast and screened around the world. She works in several tongues and has produced pieces in Danish, Icelandic, English, Swedish, Norwegian – and also in languages such as Greenlandic, Faroese and Sahtu Dene in collaboration with translators. She is an initiator and manager of the transnational collaborative radio feature projects RANA, Polar Radio and Moving Voices as well as MIRP board member since 2015.

“Rikke makes programmes capturing the poetry of humanity. Even if you don’t speak Danish by listening to her programmes you can appreciate the creativity and beauty of her story telling. She gently creates a sound world that engages your imagination with the heart of her subjects. She communicates through the universal art of radio and sound documentary. Her programmes are evocative and to quote Wordsworth’s ’emotion recollected in tranquility.” -Tim Crook

Lu Olkowski is an award-winning radio producer based in Brooklyn. She is drawn to stories that evolve through multiple generations: how pride or shame in one’s racial identity, poverty, and artistic impulse can be passed down in families. At present, she is working on three secret radio projects. At least one of them will be a podcast.