Archiv der Kategorie: Radio

Symphony of Sirens: 1922 / 1923 / 2017

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Of all the arts, music possesses the greatest power for social organization. – Arseny Avraamov          

 

When over 100 years ago women workers in Petrograd facotries laid down their work, because they didn’t have money to buy bread for their families anymore, they finally brought about the break-through of the the Russian Revolution. It was still the beginning of the 20th century, nobody knew how devastating it would get, and so hopes were still high that a new man and a new woman would be born through the revolution. According to the Russian avant-gardists one of the most important means to accomplish this aim was sound, respectively acoustic experiments, mainly – noise.

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Energies & the Arts

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Visiting Joyce Hinterding & David Haines in the Blue Mountains (NSW), Australia

“Like linguists turn to coding, silversmiths turn to electronics”, says David Haines. For the Australian artists it seems to be the most natural thing in the world to artistically transcend materials, media and genres. Haines, who just has been awarded the 2017 Australia Council Visual Arts Fellowship for two years, to delve further into his “abiding interest in aroma as an art form” and develop a substantial exhibition across the range of his practices, is one half of the intriguing Australian art couple Haines & Hinterding. The other half is Joyce Hinterding, a former silversmith and nowadays an artistic expert on energies, especially on Very Low Frequency Radio Waves and Natural Radio.

 

During my research stay in Australia Douglas Kahn was so kind and generous to introduce me to his dear friends and neighbours Joyce and David. The couple invited me to visit them at their lovely home in the bush of the Blue Mountains to learn more about their art practices – an unexpected, spontaneous visit, which turned out to be one of the highlights of my research trip down under. After a nice spring roll lunch and some conversation we wanted to go and see some kangaroos together. However, I quickly became so fascinated by the multisensory artistic cosmos of Haines & Hinterding and our conversation lasted so long that the kangaroo visit had to be postponed. 

What makes the works of Haines & Hinterding so fascinating to me is the fact that they are outstanding examples of artistic research.

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Cross-currents: Gender and Transnational Broadcasting

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Report about transnational workshop at Bournemouth University, Centre for Media History, July 6 – 7, 2017

When I presented my PhD project “Radiophonics, Noise and Understanding” at the fist workshop of the Australian-German “Transnational Media Histories” collaboration[1] at the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University, in Sydney in February 2017, Dr Jeannine Baker asked me if I would like to join a workshop, which she and her colleague Dr Justine Lloyd were planning together with the British radio scholar Dr Kate Murphy for July in Bournemouth, UK. Its topic: Gender and transnational broadcasting. I asked her, if gender would refer exclusively to female aspects of broadcasting or if I also would be allowed to discuss the topic of my PhD about noise and radio art from a male and masculinity studies perspective. Jeannine liked the idea and so I got invited to participate in, and to present at, a very fruitful and inspiring international, two-day workshop at the Centre for Media History at Bournemouth University.

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Natural Radio

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Energizing Encounter with Douglas Kahn

What makes Australia and especially Sydney for radio art researchers like me such a desirable place to go to is the variety of sound and radio artists and scholars, who live and work there. There are numerous reasons for this cluster or gathering, as I found out during my research stay. However, one main reason certainly is Douglas Kahn, Professor for Media and Innovation at the University of New South Wales. Being responsible for such outstanding, seminal books like the essay collection Wireless Imagination. Sound, Radio and The Avant-Garde (1992), which he co-edited with the radio artist Gregory Whitehead and his two monographs Noise, Water, Meat. A History of Sound in the Arts (1999) and Earth Sound Earth Signal. Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts (2013), Douglas Kahn attracts PhD candidates and researchers from all over the world, who are interested in radio and sound and their relation to the arts. 

 

When I eventually dared to contact Douglas Kahn and kindly asked him for an interview, he was very friendly and generous and invited me to visit him at his home in Katoomba, a cozy little town at the fringe of the overwhelming, scenic Blue Mountains Nation Park, about two hours by train west of Sydney. 

After I had read „Wireless Imagination“ and „Noise Water Meat“ with great benefit for my own research on the epistemology of radio art, I turned to „Earth Sound Earth Signal“, which left me behind quite a bit baffled at first. At the same time I developed the hunch that this book is about something really fascinating, mind-blowing. And as I like challenges, I kept coming back to it, over and over again. One sentence, which had struck me in particular, was „Radio was heard before it was invented and it was broadcast before it was heard.“ Therefore I asked Doug at the beginning of our interview, if he would be so kind to explain this phenomenon, which is called „natural radio“. You can listen to the interview dubbed in German here, and you can read it below in English. This is what Doug answered:  Weiterlesen →

Sonic Reflections

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Conversation with Colin Black about Radio Art

When I met Colin Black for the first time in June 2014 at the Radio as Art Conference in Bremen it made a strong impression on me when one evening this tall, slim man with shoulder-length blond hair from Australia looked up to the German sky and wondered whispering to himself: „Oh, this is how the moon looks like up here.“ Since then I was longing so much to go to Australia someday to find out how the moon looks like Down Under.

Of course the moon was not the only reason I very much wished to travel to Australia. Like Canada this huge country on the other side of the planet has an amazing radio research and radio art scene and as a radio art reseacher I of course wanted to find out more about the reasons why this is so.

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„Desert Bloom“ received renowned Karl-Sczuka-Preis for Radio Art

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Yesterday the German sound artist Christina Kubisch, the producer and composer Peter Kutin and the musician and sound engineer Florian Kindlinger, both Austrian, received the renowned Karl-Sczuka Preis für Hörspiel als Radiokunst at the Donaueschingen Festival. Their radioplay Desert Bloom, which was produced only in English, is an intriguing portrait of the city Las Vegas, of its shiny, gloomy and fake promises of quick wealth – and of  its dark, disturbing sides as well.

 

This city portrait is mainly told by the means of electric static, by noises that the human ear normally cant’t perceive. Christina Kubisch is well-known for developing her very special head phones which make it possible to discover the un-hearable side of modern cities and environments in the context of her performances and so-called Electrical Walks.

img_2057Being a great fan of Christina Kubisch’s work I of course went to the arward ceremony. Asked how she came up with the idea if portraiing Las Vegas this way, Christina Kubuch just replied: „Oh, I married there once.“ Listening to Desert Bloom I venture to say: It was definitely worth it…. Congratulations to all the artists!

Interviews on Art, Technology & Feminism

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From this week on my radio interview series „Art, Technology, Feminism“ will be broadcast again within hör!spiel!art.mix at Bayern2. It was a great pleasure and experience to speak to four such inspring female artists and scientists. Afterwards the interview with VALIE EXPORT, the interview with Ute Holl, the interview with Cornelia Sollfrank and the interview with Silke Wenk will be available as podcasts in German.

Photo credits in order of slide show:

VALIE EXPORT CC BY-SA 3.0 Manfred Werner, Ute Holl © Andreas Zimmermann, Cornelia Sollfrank CC BY-SA 3.0 Cornelia Sollfrank, Silke Wenk © Eva-Maria Evers.

Okwui Enwezor on „Aesthetics & Postcolonialism“

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Before I left the drama department of Bayern2 Radio for working at the University of Basel and starting my PhD, I had the great pleasure to interview Okwui Enwezor, who had just become the director of Haus der Kunst in Munich. Tonight the interview from 2011 with interesting insights on growing up in Nigeria, being a young black man in the New York art scene in the 1980s and many more will be broadcast again. You can listen to the pocast here. (All dubbed in German)

Okwui Enwezor, director of Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany. Foto: Andreas Gebert

Okwui Enwezor, director of Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany. Foto: Andreas Gebert

Todtnauberg: Researching Paul Celan’s encounter with Martin Heidegger

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The philosophical radio magazine „Sein und Streit“ asked me to visit for them the hut of Martin Heidegger in Todtnauberg, a climatic spa approximately 60 minutes by car from Basel in the Black Forest. Of course I knew about this famous hut, which Heidegger acquired in the early 1920s and where he concentrated on developing his fundamental ontology.

Heidegger’s hut above Todtnauberg and the famous well with the star-die on top. (August 2016)

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80 Years Living Legend: Happy Birthday, Bazon Brock!

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Birthday boy takes a nap.

Birthday boy takes a nap.

Today Bazon Brock turns 80. Being an unique mixture of an artist and an polymath, Bazon Brock studied with Theordor W. Adorno, helped to bring Fluxus to Germany in the 1960th and was a close collaborator of Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell. Brock is emeritus Professor of Aesthetics and Cultural Education at the Bergische Universität in Wuppertal, Germany.  He developed the method of “Action Teaching”, in which the seminar hall becomes a place for staging oneself and others. From 1968 until 1992 he launched the documenta-schools for visitors. As „Bazon“ is the Greek word for a talkative person, Bazon Brock developed talking and the mediation of art to an art form, always driven by on the one hand his fury against Hitlerism, which he suffered severely of as a child, being a refugee at the end of the Second World War from the east, and on the other hand by his euphoria to be alive.

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