WALKIE-TALKIE TO THE WAVES
Niamh Schmidtke
Episode two featured Niamh Schmidtke’s work ‘Walkie Talkie to the Waves’, a two-act radio play set in the Irish Sea. Placed in a near future, the dialogue plays with what a Green New Deal might look and feel like in the UK, the Republic and Northern Ireland. Acted across committee meetings and the sea, voiced by parliaments, water and pirates, these conversations suggest how nationalism can be a dangerous response to climate breakdown.
Niamh Schmidtke is a visual artist based between Dublin and London with Irish/Swedish heritage. She completed her MFA at Goldsmiths, in 2021. Through object making, installation and writing, she explores the relationship between financial logics and climate breakdown through fiction, in order to express the social and political complications of ‘being green'. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including a solo exhibition at Limerick City Gallery (2019), a presentation of academic research and sculpture at the 3rdDARE conference, Ghent, Belgium (2019) and Goldsmiths MFA Degree Show, London (2021), and in 2022 she was shortlisted for the Gilchrist Fisher Award.