Ground Zero revisits some iconic material I collected on Wall Street during the crash of 2008. We arrived on Wall St as artists-in-residence for the Conflux Festival on Sept 11th, right in the middle of the first Obama presidential election campaign. Conspiracy theorists were out on the streets, spouting stories of Israeli Mossad involvement in the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11 and impromptu hustings were springing up on street corners. Little did we know, as I stood outside the Wall Street Stock Exchange, trying to read out loud the movement of the markets from the live ticker tape, that Lehman Brothers was about to crash, bringing with it the entire global financial system.

I have used these recordings of the “moments before the fall” many times in the past in The Ballad of Skinny Lattes & Vintage Clothing and elsewhere, but this is the first time that I have collected them all together into a continuous mix or radiophonic installation. Text from The Manifesto of Neo Futurism and Crashes, Bangs and other matter is by Rowena Easton. The musical section comes from a collaborative performance between myself and Mike Blow as part of Active Crossover II, which was released as part of a compilation by Furthernoise in 2010. This can be heard around 90 minutes in…

Staalplaat Radio’s two-hour experimental music and sound art show is broadcast fortnightly on DFM.nu and comes courtesy of the wonderful Staalplaat Records, based here in Berlin.