Mexican artist Julian Bonequi’s winning proposal, "The Death of the Anthropocene," imagines a series of one-on-one encounters between ordinary people and mysterious visitors – mutants, composite human-robot-animals, aliens… – painting humorous yet grim pictures of the future of humanity.

In "Happy New Fear," the second selected CTM Radio Lab work, Rima Najdi aimed to explore an environment of anxiety and control via a narrative built around Madame Bomba, a character first created in 2014 when Najdi wore a fake cartoon TNT bomb around her chest while roaming the streets of her hometown Beirut. For this project she collaborated with musician Kathy Alberici (of Drum Eyes fame) and visual artist Ana Nieves Moya. Light designer Theresa Baumgartner and technical director Federico Nitti supported the project. Happy New Fear was developed, in part, at the 2016 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in MENA with additional Post-Lab Support funds made possible from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

View photos from the performances via DISK/CTM Festival's Flickr.

Both works willbe broadcast via Deutschlandradio Kultur in March 2017. Listen to a broadcast of the radio version of Rima Najdi's "Happy New Fear" on 24.03.2017. The radio version of Julian Bonequi's "The Death of the Anthropocene" will be aired on 31.03.2017. In Autumn 2017, these works will be presented by the ORF (Austrian National Broadcasting Corporation) via one of their platforms.

The Radio Lab, which returned to CTM Festival for a fourth year, is dedicated to exploration and experimentation with the hybrid possibilities of combining the medium of radio with live performance. Following an open call in summer 2016, two projects were selected and supported with a SoCCoS residency in Berlin, culminating in a performance at CTM 2017 Festival.