New Friend

About New Friend

New Friend is a 5-part limited series audio documentary that delves into the fascinating story behind photographs taken by the groundbreaking lesbian artist and filmmaker Barbara Hammer in August 1973, on Hornby Island, Ja-Dai-Aich, British Columbia. It's a story of art, archives, single motherhood, long-distance love affairs and liberation across 1000 miles. Credits: Hosted by Bitsy Knox. Production, research, script and sound design by Bitsy Knox. Mixing and mastering by Robert Steenkamer. New Friend was originally aired on Cashmere Radio Berlin and 96.5 CHFR Hornby Island Community Radio. Cover image courtesy of The Estate of Barbara Hammer. New Friend is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. Thank you to: The Estate of Barbara Hammer Hornby Island Community Archives Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Cashmere Radio, Berlin 96.5 CHFR Hornby Island Community Radio KOW, Berlin Company Gallery, New York City Hornby Arts Centre Florrie Burke Louky Keijsers Koning Martha Ross Derek Anderson Rebecca Dunne Emma Walter Emily Harrison All beings, human and more-than-human, of Hornby Island, Ja-Dai-Aich, and its surrounding waters—where I am a part-time, uninvited guest on the unceded, traditional, and ancestral land of the K'omoks First Nation, the Eitsen, Pentlach, Sasitla and Sahtloot peoples.

Publisher

Bitsy Knox

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

27 Aug 2026

Latest episode

31 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

5 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   31 Aug 2026

   CHAPTER 5 - I THINK THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED

   It's September 1973. Barbara Hammer and Terry Anderson have parted ways, and are back at their respective schools: Barbara at San Francisco State University, Terry at the University of British Columbia. The vibrations of their Summer tryst – an uncertainty for the future – reverberate in letters to each other. In this chapter of New Friend, we follow the days, weeks, months, and years after the photographs, through the trials and tribulations of being a lesbian mother in the 1970s, wani...

2. 

   31 Aug 2026

   CHAPTER 4 - 1000 MILES

   It’s the Summer of 1973. Barbara Hammer has had a busy summer, zigzagging across California on her motorcycle, camping and visiting ex-lovers, lesbian conferences and festivals. Along the way, she meets Terry Anderson, a feverishly intelligent single mother of two, an academic with an artistic mind. Together, they embark on a 1000-mile adventure that will lead them to Hornby Island Ja-Dai-Aich along with two 19-year olds, Martha Ross and Rosemary Allenbach. On Hornby, Barbara Hammer takes thr...

3. 

   29 Aug 2026

   CHAPTER 3 - TOPIA

   The 29 photographs that make up Barbara Hammer's 2017 exhibition Truant: Photographs, 1970 – 1979, at Company Gallery in New York City, have often been described as 'utopic', or, in the case of an essay by the artist A.L. Steiner for the exhibition's accompanying catalogue – as 'heterotopic': a world within a world, othered. They are dynamic visions that encapsulate the hopes of a moment: unabashedly joyful, sexy and brimming with curiosity. But what was brewing culturally, politically ...

4. 

   28 Aug 2026

   CHAPTER 2 - ARRIVAL

   In late August 1973, the artist and filmmaker Barbara Hammer, her lover Terry Anderson and two 'brilliant 19-year olds' arrived on Hornby Island, part of the Gulf Island archipelago of the Salish Sea; and the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Pentlach and K'ómoks First Nation. While there, Barbara Hammer took three rolls of film. Her photographs are ecstatic first impressions of a place and the intuitions given to interacting with it for the first time – documents of a...

5. 

   27 Aug 2026

   CHAPTER 1 - THE ARCHIVE

   If a photograph is explained, fleshed out beyond its rectangular peripheries, given depth of field, does it become more powerful, or does its poignancy and its romance fade with minor detail, thousands of little lights cast into the distance, distracting from its acuity? Barbara Hammer (1939–2019) is one of the most celebrated experimental lesbian filmmakers of the 20th and 21st centuries, known for films like Dyketactics, Nitrate Kisses, and A Horse Is Not a Metaphor. But in the Summer...

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