BEK presents the new commissioned work by Roy Claire Potter .

Roy Claire Potter’s new work Shit Out Here Purple is titled after the effect that mountain bilberries have on digestion. This new performance responds to the linguistic protocols of amateur shortwave radio cultures, and how making ‘contact’ – or QSO – is centred and differentiated from ordinary conversation.

A sparsely arranged audio collage brings new and archival radio recordings together with modular synthesised sounds, and newly written spoken libretto that experiments with a narrative of fieldwork operations, to produce a jerky, inarticulate reflection on distressed or intense desires for communicative contact.

For the premiere, Roy has produced a booklet of detachable drawings that riff on the counter-cultural tradition of Eyeball Cards, made and shared at in-person meetings during the 1980s by users of the then-illegal Citizens Broadcast radio in the United Kingdom.

The work is commissioned by BEK in 2023, and started with Potter doing a two-week studio residency at BEK in July 2023. The presentation takes place in the context of BEK Opening Week.

Photo credit: Petronelle Halvorsen