For PRISON RADIO, Orgest Azizi prepared his lecture Drowned Voices, Wild Grass, bringing together different strands of thought and unexpected worlds
in relation to prison and radio. Last year, we marked the 50th anniversary of the original publication of Discipline and Punish through the lens of light: the prison as an optical machine, and the political appearances and disappearances of the body. 2026 marks the centenary of Michel Foucault’s birth (1926–1984). This festival
offers an occasion to explore the sonic dimension of the work of an author who was also an intensive practitioner of radio. Foucault is also a “theoretical voice,” one of the first fetishized – and massively recorded – voices of theory. This sonic over-presence-and male presence-stands in contrast to the silence of the prison and to the absence of a sonic dimension in his study. Even more so when it comes to the female dimension, both of the prison and of the voice. Yet the prison is a place of all kinds of noises, murmurs, screams, groans, messages – even chirping. A revolutionary affirmation of life, as attested by Rosa Luxemburg’s Prison Herbarium.

PRISON RADIO Festival

PRISON RADIO is an international, transdisciplinary sound and radio art project that rethinks both prison and radio as social, political and artistic structures. Broadcast and recorded in Prishtina from 10 to 13 September 2026, the festival featured a 72-hour radio programme, comprising approximately 30 hours of live broadcasts and 42 hours of pre-produced content. Taking the Former Prishtina Prison as a resonant site, the festival approaches the prison not only as a historical institution of confinement, but also as a metaphor for wider invisible architectures of limitation: social roles, gender norms, borders, political pressure, economic constraint, trauma, language, surveillance and silence. Through radio art, soundwalks, live broadcasts, performances, concerts, lectures, workshops, a community run, collective listening sessions and the exhibition Sound, Resisting, which extended across four prison blocks, the watchtower and the courtyards, PRISON RADIO transformed a former site of punishment into a temporary space of voice, resistance and public reflection. The festival draws on critical prison studies, the politics of listening, sound studies, the concept of the prison without walls and the carceral continuum. It understands radio as a dissident and participatory medium through which voices, art and sounds travel beyond walls, borders and dominant narratives.

Curation & programme: PRISON RADIO Collective (Alban Beqiraj, Blertë Ismajli, Alexander Vojvoda, Verena Walzl)
Organisation: STRALLI
Radio production: Lumpen Station (CH), commissioned by PRISON RADIO Festival
Live radio direction, technical production & post-production: Andrea Marioni, Lumpen Station
Partners: Lumpen Station (CH), Kolektiv Radio (KS), Molla e Kuqe (KS)
Venues: Burgu i Idealit (Former Prishtina Prison) and Hani i dy Robertëve, Prishtina
Supported by: Embassy of Switzerland in Kosovo, Austrian Embassy in Prishtina, Institut Français du Kosovo / French Embassy in Prishtina