RadioActive - on Water #6 - Liquidation by Meira Asher

A six-part series by Meira Asher and Stephen Shiell exploring the interactions between transmission, sound, activism and water. Each episode is created by a different artist or group who engage with water politics and the politics of listening through the medium of radio.

There is currently a structural water crisis in the Palestinian Occupied Jordan Valley. Not a climate or geographical water crisis, a deliberate socially and politically engineered crisis. Israel, since it invaded the West Bank in 1967, controls every public aspect of civilian life in the Jordan Valley. Israel administers two populations, the Israeli settlers and the indigenous Palestinian residents. Israel deliberately and strategically deprives Palestinian farming communities of access to fresh, clean and reliable water supplies, water that is needed for crops and herds, as well as for the Palestinian farmers and herders.

This can mean either not permitting them to be connected to municipal water supplies, despite the Israeli settlers having such access. It also entails not permitting Palestinian people to sink new wells on their own land, and blocking their access to existing wells and springs, either by fencing off the water source or destroying pipes bringing the water to the herders and farmers. The end result is frequently that either the farmers have to pay extortionate prices to purchase water from the Palestinian authority, or if they cannot afford this option they are forced to abandon their land and way of life.

Featuring the water truck driver, co-activists Natasha and Nitsan, shepherds community of Khalet Makhul, shepherd ‘W’, shepherds community of Hirbet Samra and Aref Daragmah. Translation from Arabic: Laila Abd El-Razaq. Introductory text: Liam Evans

Meira Asher is a composer, performer and human rights activist. She primarily uses the medium of sound-art and radio-art. Graduate of CalArts and KonCon, she was co-founder of the Bodylab art foundation with Guy Harries (2001-11), where they produced several projects including Infantry and Woman See Lot of Things. Former lecturer at University of Haifa's Art School (2012-2022) and producer of the independent radio-art show radioart106. since 2014.

Her works have been released on Crammed, Sub Rosa, Auditorium, Raash Records and Ultima Ratio labels. Her recent works include Antonin Artaud’s radio essay To Have Done with the Judgement of God, Sonic Voyage of Resistance for Radio Art Zone 2022, and the Catastrophe trilogy by duo Asher.Zax featuring Dave Phillips, Ensemble Musica Nova, and more.