Signs commemorating the work of the Kitchen Sisters at the "Reality Radio" performance and book signing at the American Tobacco Campus. Photograph by Maggie Smith. July 26, 2010.
photos from the reality radio performance and book signing with the kitchen sisters
July 26, 2010
Held in conjunction with the CDS summer Audio Institute, Hearing is Believing
More about the CDS publication Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound
Davia Nelson (left) and Nikki Silva (right)
reality radio performance & book signing with the kitchen sisters
A public event in conjunction with CDS summer audio institute, Hearing Is Believing
Monday, July 26, 7 p.m.
Bay 7, American Tobacco Complex, Durham, North Carolina
Award winning National Public Radio producers, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva of The Kitchen Sisters, began their collaboration within documentary arts over twenty-five years ago. Their renowned partnership has been responsible for some of the most intimate, provocative, and sound-rich documentary work to date. Hidden Kitchens, their duPont Award winning radio series, reveals a world of legendary meals, curious eating habits and long forgotten tradition. Lost & Found Sound series, heard on NPR’s All Things Considered, reveals a tapestry of richly layered audio artifact. Seeking out seldom-heard voices of Americans all across the county, the Kitchen Sisters weave together a sound-score that concerns itself with how sound shapes history and how history has been shaped by sound. They are currently producing NPR series The Hidden World of Girls - Girls and the Women They Become, an in-depth exploration of coming of age rituals, hidden identities, and portraits of extraordinary ordinary women.
Read more about the CDS publication Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound.
Directions: http://www.americantobaccohistoricdistrict.com/directory.html
Paid parking is available in the North Parking Deck off Pettigrew Street.
cds/honickman first book prize in photography
2008 CDS / Honickman First Book Prize in Photography winner Jennette Williams talks about her process of making the photographs in The Bathers, and Prize Judge Mary Ellen Mark explains what attracted her to Jennette’s work, and the importance of a first book in a photographer’s life.
Apply for the 2010 prize between June 15 and September 8 , 2010. The judge for the 2010 competition is William Eggleston.
From left to right: The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva), Ira Glass, Joe Richman, and Gwen Macsai at the "Reality Radio" book event in Chicago. Photograph by Alix Lowrey Blair. March 2010.
In March, the Third Coast Filmless Festival’s “Words on Sound” book launch event to celebrate the publication of Reality Radio was part of a full day of listening to sound-rich audio features made by some of the most influential producers working today. Held at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the event kicked off with an interview of coeditors John Biewen and Alexa Dilworth by Re:sounds’s Gwen Macsai, followed by performances by Reality Radio contributors Ira Glass (This American Life), the Kitchen Sisters (Hidden Kitchens, Lost & Found Sound), and Joe Richman (Radio Diaries).
Listen to audio from the festival
Singer-songwriter Abraham Levitan’s compositions, written and performed on the spot, followed each speaker. Listen to the song he wrote after hearing Macsai’s conversation with Biewen and Dilworth - “It’s a Book About Sound”
From left: John Biewen (seated) and Bob Edwards (at lectern). Photograph by Jodi Biewen.
reality radio book signing and talk at politics and prose, washington, dc
May 15, 2010
“Reality Radio is a fabulous book I wish I could have read when I started at NPR in 1974. It would have shaved 10–15 years off the learning curve in discovering how to make great radio.”—Bob Edwards, host of The Bob Edwards Show on Sirius XM Radio
Paul Kwilecki, 2009. Cell phone photograph by Tom Rankin.
Paul Kwilecki, born in 1928 in Bainbridge, Georgia, died in his hometown in early December 2009. Kwilecki had been associated with the Center for Documentary Studies and Duke University since the late 1970s; the Paul Kwilecki Collection was one of first and most prominent collections to be acquired by the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library’s Archive of Documentary Arts.
Perhaps the most important late-twentieth-century photographer you’ve heard little to nothing about, Kwilecki spent most of his days in his hometown and county, schooling himself by carefully studying contemporary photography and corresponding with a range of artists and photographers, most notably and regularly David Vestal. In 1981 he published Understandings (University of North Carolina Press), which was edited by Alex Harris.
Kwilecki set out to photograph his home in Decatur County, Georgia, and did so for over forty years. He often would say that his hometown was “a place that some say has no meaning.” But like William Faulkner, who stayed home to create his remarkable body of literature, Kwilecki had a different vision. “The task is complicated,” he said at a lecture at Duke in 2001. “I am one man, one mind, one pair of eyes trying to distinguish what is significant in an entire community.” He went about this work with a deep honesty, following his own instincts, his own point of view. “I rearrange the sacred furniture,” he said. “Because my brain, not my camera, is my instrument, beauty isn’t enough.”
Paul Kwilecki was a dear friend of the Center for Documentary Studies, someone who will forever provide an example of in-depth documentary work about one place through time. “I photograph subjects who are, to me, vivid and substantial,” he once said. “I leave everything else alone.”
—Tom Rankin, director of the Center for Documentary Studies
center for documentary studies announces new internship program
The Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University is accepting applications for nine-month internship positions that will begin in September 2010 and end in May 2011. The interns will gain broad experience in the documentary field, with particular focus on exhibiting, publishing (print and web), and producing a range of materials related to the documentary arts. Two positions are available. (See more detailed descriptions below.) The interns will be based at CDS in Durham, North Carolina, for the 2010-11 academic year.
To qualify, applicants should be recent college graduates (no more than three years out of school) who demonstrate excellent communications abilities, pay careful attention to details, balance initiative and drive with congeniality and team play, show creative talent, and exhibit achievement in some aspect of the documentary arts. CDS internships require a commitment of 30 hours per week, and interns receive a monthly stipend of $1,000.
Interns will be expected to participate as staff colleagues in all CDS activities.
The Center for Documentary Studies offers an interdisciplinary program in the documentary arts—photography, audio, film/video, narrative writing, and other means of creative expression—that emphasizes active engagement in the world beyond the university campus. Much more than a traditional educational center, CDS encourages experiential learning in diverse environments outside the classroom, with an emphasis on the role of individual artistic expression in advancing broader societal goals. Programs range widely to include university undergraduate courses, popular summer institutes that attract students from across the country, international awards competitions, award-winning book publishing and radio programming, exhibitions of new and established artists in our own galleries, and fieldwork projects in the U.S. and abroad. READ MORE: http://cds.aas.duke.edu
To apply to be part of the 2010-11 internship program, send a cover letter, resume, writing sample, one letter of recommendation, and a personal statement of goals and intent for the internship to Lauren Hart at lh90@duke.edu. Please send all materials as electronic files with “internship applicant (applicant’s name) – (exhibitions or publishing)” in the e-mail subject line. Ideally, the recommendation letter should be sent as a PDF directly from the person who is recommending the applicant, with the same information in the e-mail subject line.
deadline: June 1, 2010.
The Reality Radio website features links to all of the audio/radio pieces referenced in the book, as well as links to dozens of audio resources.
Reality Radio celebrates today’s best audio documentary work by bringing together some of the most influential and innovative practitioners from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In these twenty essays, documentary makers tell—and demonstrate, through stories and transcripts—how they make radio the way they do, and why.
Whether the contributors to the volume call themselves journalists, storytellers, even audio artists—and although their essays are just as diverse in content and approach—all use sound to tell true stories, artfully.
with essays by jad abumrad, jay allison, damali ayo, john biewen, emily botein, chris brookes, scott carrier, katie davis, sherre selys, lena eckert-erdheim, ira glass, alan hall, natalie kestecher, the kitchen sisters, maria martin, karen michel, rick moody, joe richman, dmae roberts, stephen smith, and sandy tolan
The Jazz Loft Project Exhibition Installation to Opening at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts from The Jazz Loft Project on Vimeo.
Filmed and edited by Courtney Reid-Eaton, exhibitions director at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.
The Jazz Loft Project exhibition opened at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center on February 17, 2010. Estimates are that 500 to 700 people attending the opening.
CDS Exhibitions Director Courtney Reid-Eaton traveled to New York (her home town) more than two weeks before the opening to install the show. She worked with LPA’s staff, led by Curator of Exhibitions Barbara Cohen-Stratyner and including Rene Ronda, Herbert Ruiz, Mike Diekmann, Laura Clifford, and Caitlin Mack.
Courtney documented the installation process on video, which she has edited into the following 8-minute sequence. It provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the painstaking world required to mount a show. The dimensions of every object are accounted for in regard to every inch of the space. There is selflessness to hanging exhibitions; the curators disappear and the artwork takes over. Courtney achieved this beautifully. She makes Jazz Loft Project staff (Dan Partridge, Lauren Hart, and me) and CDS look good. Gene Smith would be proud, too.
—Sam Stephenson
The Jazz Loft Project Exhibition is on view at the New York Public Library for Performing Arts through May 22, 2010.
More about the Jazz Loft Project
reality radio: telling true stories in sound
by John Biewen, editor / Alexa Dilworth, coeditor
Published by the University of North Carolina Press and CDS Books at the Center for Documentary Studies
launch event
Saturday, March 6, 2010, 7:30 p.m.
Words on Sound: Book Launch and Signing
With contributors Ira Glass, the Kitchen Sisters, and Joe Richman
Third Coast Filmless Festival
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
220 E. Chicago Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
“A book launch at a radio festival?! You got it. The TCF is thrilled to celebrate the launch of Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound, a brand-new / first-of-its-kind collection of essays written by some of the most accomplished radio producers working today. Re:sound’s Gwen Macsai will join Reality Radio contributors Ira Glass (This American Life), Joe Richman (Radio Diaries) and the Kitchen Sisters (Hidden Kitchens, Lost & Found Sound) for a lively discussion—including lots of audio, of course—about what makes radio stories so damn special. Copies of Reality Radio will be available for purchase at a book signing following the event.”