Radio Against Repression

Exploring censorship, defunding and repression

recent posts

about
Meet performer and anthropologist Jara Nassar, independent radio activist of 10 years jewelz, and artist Alex Head. Where state repression of artistic freedom foreshadows the repression of the private citizen’s freedom of speech, this show will seek to turn the microphone, to witness how censorship and repression are re-shaping the cultural landscape of Berlin, while artists and activists find creative ways to communicate their urgent concerns to one another. All against a backdrop of evermore troubled relationships between artists, institutions, creative scenes and political commonalities. Each responding to policies emanating from the political Far Right to defund the arts, social infrastructure, education and welfare. Created with sub_ʇxǝʇ radio. Affiliated with Arts and Cultural Alliance Berlin







  • S1E5 Irwan Ahmett on The Indonesian Hospital in Gaza & 🌋

    Artist Irwan Ahmett is interviewed about the worlds that brutal resource extraction has created and destroyed. From the sacred mountains of Papua to the live-streamed genocide of Palestinians on your device, Irwan’s work with Tita Salina charts the terror of now and the eternal creativity of the human species over deep time.

    Branding #Death #TheBody #ColonialHypocrisy #Gaza #Palestine #TheIndonesianHospital #LiveRadio

    Interview by Alex Head

    Images:
    #1 A rotten security post container on a decaying reclaimed island.
    #2 Offering to the ocean – 1
    #3 One of the ugliest beaches made from metropolitan residents’ sins caused the silting of the rivers in Jakarta.
    #4 Offering to the ocean – 2

  • S1E4 The Third Encampment – Protest Camp Berlin

    Radio Against Repression shares perspectives from within the Occupy Against Occupation (Bezetzung gegen Bezatzung), protest camp currently active opposite the German parliamentary building (Bundestag), in Berlin. Join us live from the studio for a one-to-one discussion of interviews and vivid sonic landscapes, exploring the camps’ wider goals while centering the crises Israel has long created for Palestinians.

  • S1E3 Hate Speech & Insult Law – with Jason Oberman

    On air discussion with Jason Oberman’s addressing their three part series Inciting Hatred and Slinging Insults: Exploring the Legal Apparatus of the BRD on The Left Berlin. Jason Oberman (they/them) is an anti-zionist Ashkenazi Jewish American based in Zürich. A musician, composer, songwriter and rogue scholar who formerly lived in Berlin, Jason researches, lectures and writes on Jewish identity, Zionism, Palestine, and Germany’s weaponization of the “fight against Antisemitism”. They are a member of Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in der nähe Ost and Kollektiv Doykait. 

    Interview by performer and anthropologist Jara Nassar. Joined by Alex Head and juwelz in the studio.

  • S1E2 Francesca Albanese at bUm

    A lecture by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, as part of the February 19th event: Conditions of Life Calculated to Destroy, Legal and Forensic Perspectives on the Ongoing Gaza Genocide – at bUm, Berlin.

    The lecture was supposed to take place in a big lecture hall at Freie universitat, along with Eyal Weizman, director of Forensic Architecture. but the university cancelled the event after massive critique, amongst others from the Israeli ambassador, and from the mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegner, who called it antisemitic. The relocated event at bUm took place under police presence. A few days earlier, Albanese’s lecture at a University in Munich had also been cancelled, as we mentioned in Episode One.

    Huge thanks to UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, Zoë Claire Miller and bUm Berlin.

    View the entire event at bUm here: https://vimeo.com/1058614428

  • S1E1 Policing Education – Emergency Broadcast

    In episode one: Policing Education, we give a subtextual reading of the parliamentary resolution “Confronting anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment at schools and universities and securing free space for debate”. Analysed with guests within and adjacent to contemporary formal education in Germany, sounding the alarm around shrinking spaces for free speech and expression.
Guest contributions from Aviad Albert, an Israeli citizen working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cologne, Thomas Herzmark, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Göttingen and Carmen an academic working in the field of religion in Germany.

    With performer and anthropologist Jara Nassar, jewelz, an independent radio activist of 10 years, and artist and author Alex Head.

  • Website: Radio Against Repression (R A R)

    Radio Against Repression (R A R) is the radio hour archived as a podcast that explores relationships between censorship, defunding and repression.

    Inaugurated with an emergency episode to discuss the (Mis)-Education Resolution in January 2025, R A R has aired monthly episodes exploring hate speech laws in Germany; censorship as a characteristic of authoritarian regimes globally; the Occupy Against Occupation Protest Camp, among others.

    Located at the heart of the Berlin’s activist movements and ‘front-line’ in the face of violent police oppression, Radio Against Repression speaks to those directly effected by the sharp right wing lurch as it manifests in Germany.

    A fundraising round will follow in due course by the end of the year.

    If you would like to propose an episode of Radio Against Repression contact us at the email address on the about page.

    Jara and Alex Live in the R A R Studio