performingbordersRadio x Montez Press Radio | From the Lips to the Moon with Pouya Ehsaei

performingbordersRADIO Episode 4
Original broadcasting date: 28 September 2023

performingbordersRadio explores the entanglement between Live Art and notions and lived experiences of intersectional and transnational borders, bi-monthly on Montez Press Radio. This radio space hosts and shares collaborative, sound-based performance work created with and by artists in the performingborders network.

From the Lips to the Moon is an unusual music and poetry performance. An immersive space made through the synergies of words, melodies, languages and beats. Created by electronic musician and composer Pouya Ehsaei and performance maker and word trickster Tara Fatehi, From the Lips to the Moon is a regular music and poetry night in London where they invite other poets and musicians to join them in creating live improvised performances. It is an event full of riveting live music, mind-bending beats, fierce poetry, absurd texts and goosebumps. The performances are often streamed to the Palestine-based Radio-Alhara. 

This month we’re talking to Pouya about the project, listening to some of their favourite recordings from the performances, talking about multidisciplinary collaboration, and thinking more about what it means to work transnationally through sound. 

Listen to all of performingbordersRadio episodes here:

Artist bios:

Pouya Ehsaei is an musician, sound designer, producer, curator and radio host. As a producer, he fuses analogue and digital hardware with audio software to compose and produce music. As a curator and collaborator, he brings together contrasting and diverse artistic flavours in order to create new aesthetics. He started his musical career in the underground scene of his hometown Tehran. He has since performed in acclaimed venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, Barbican Centre, Southbank Centre and Bozar as well as festivals including Montreux Jazz Festival, Womex, Womad, Fusion, Bahidora, Manana, Boomtown, Shambala and Linecheck. He has produced two solo studio albums and another two for Ariwo – Iranian/Cuban/UK band led by Pouya. 

Pouya has organised and curated: the ACE funded series Parasang (2018-22) with over 30 concerts in the UK followed by 12 livestreams during the pandemic, working with over 80 musicians from many cultures and genres; three well-received music nights at Kings Place (2021); ‘John Cage is Happening’ a festival of experimental performances in Tehran (2012). 

His compositions for performances, films, installations and exhibitions have been presented at the Venice Biennale, Contempo Fest, Mosaic World Film Festival, and theatres, galleries and cinemas internationally.  In 2020, he was awarded the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers. 

Tara Fatehi is an Iranian performer, artist, writer and academic working across live performance, video, music and multidisciplinary projects since 2006. Using writing, movement and voice, her work is at the intersection of the socio-political and the poetic. 

Tara has performed at several prestigious venues and festivals around the UK and in Oslo, Amsterdam, Singapore, Montpelier, Lisbon and more. Her major artwork Mishandled Archive is a series of 365 days of performances dispersing a family archive in public places in different countries developed with ACE Project Grants support. Her duet performance Always Already (with Karen Christopher) is part of the Horizon Showcase (Edinburgh, 2023). 

Tara’s work is published in artistic publications, academic journals, and poetry series. In addition to her book Mishandled Archive (LADA, 2020) she has directed and edited other zine and art book projects. As Digital Delivery Manager at the British Council (2013-14), Tara led several intercultural projects across arts and digital media, managing artists and contractors.  She is visiting lecturer and workshop leader at several universities including Goldsmiths, Central School of Speech and Drama, Roehampton, King’s College and at the Barbican, Gulbenkian, LADA, Dance 4.  In 2021, Tara was the first ever resident artist at the United Nations Archives in Geneva.