„Sounding Crisis“ research project (2021 – 2023)

Hervorgehoben

From September 2021 to October 2023, I was a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Sound Studies Lab of the University of Copenhagen. Regarding all issues related to my research project „Sounding Crisis – Sonic Agency as Cognate Energies for Climate Action in Denmark/Greenland and Australia,“ please visit the project website www.soundingcrisis.eu and follow me on X former Twitter (@AKMauruschat) and Instagram (@sounding_crisis).

Marie Skłodowska Curie Action Grant 2020 for „Sounding Crisis“

On Febuary 8, 2021 the European Commission announced the results of the MSCA Individual Fellowship 2020: This time €328 M in grants have been awarded to 1630 excellent experienced researchers from all over the world. It is my great pleasure and honour that my project „Sounding Crisis. Sonic Agency as Cognate Energies for Climate Action in Denmark/Greenland & Australia“ has been awarded one of these prestigious grants.

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Fog Friend Font: Ways of Doing Multilangual Sense

My monograph „Music as Seismographic Sound. Tracking down the idea of cultural translation“ has now appeared within the project „Fog Friend Font – Way of Doing Multilingual Sense“.

To find out more about the project visit the website of the publisher Humboldt Books Milan and read the project description in full.

This is in brief how the editors descriibe their intriguing project:

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Karlsruher Postulate für Geschlechtergerechtigkeit im Kulturbetrieb

Im Rahmen der ARD-Hörspieltage 2019 fand auf Initiative der WDR-Hörspielredaktion der Thementag „Wie weiblich ist der Kulturbetrieb?“ statt. Er widmete sich einer Bestandsaufnahme der gegenwärtigen Situation von Frauen in Kunst und Kultur in deutschsprachigen Ländern, denn: Über 100 Jahre nach Einführung des Frauenwahlrechts in Österreich und Deutschland, über 70 Jahre nach der Verabschiedung von Artikel 3 des bundesrepublikanischen Grundgesetzes zur Gleichberechtigung der Geschlechter und über zwei Jahre nach Beginn der internationalen #MeToo-Bewegung ist der Kulturbetrieb immer noch diskriminierend – auf ganz unterschiedliche Weise und in den unterschiedlichsten Bereichen wie z.B. in der Musik, ob in der Klassik oder im Rock, in der Literatur oder im Film.

Um die Situation von Frauen im Radio genauer unter die Lupe zu nehmen, war ich als Medienwissenschaftlerin, u.a. mit Forschungsschwerpunkt zu Gender und Medien, im Rahmen des Thementages eingeladen, den Eröffnungsvortrag zum Bechdel-Test im Hörspiel zu halten. Ausserdem nahm ich an der darauffolgenden Podiumsdiskussion mit der feministischen Linguistin Luise F. Pusch, der Genderforscherin Sabine Hark, der Islamwissenschaftlerin Lamya Kaddor, der feministischen Autorin Stefanie Lohaus und der Journalistin Hilde Weeg teil. Im Anschluss daran teilten sich die Diskutantinnen und das Publikum in drei Arbeitsgruppen auf. Ihre Ziele: Unterschiedliche Postulate formulieren, mit deren Hilfe die Situation von Frauen in Kunst und Kultur verbessert werden kann. Eine Dokumentation des Zusammentragens der Ergebnisse ist hier zu hören.

Inzwischen wurden unsere kollektiven Forderungen unter dem Titel „Die Karlsruher Postulate für Gleichberechtigung in Kunst und Kultur“ auch online veröffentlicht. Die Schriftstellerin Tanja Dückers hat ihre Sicht der Situation von Frauen im Kulturbetrieb und ihre Unterstützung der Initiative im Interview erklärt und auch die Redaktion Hörspiel und Medienkunst des Bayerischen Rundfunks hat sich zu den Karlsruher Postulaten bekannt. Für den SWR hat Wolfram Wessels mich zur Situation von Frauen in Kunst und Kultur, insbesondere im Hörspiel, und zu den Karlsruher Postulaten interviewt. Das Interview kann hier angehört werden.

Nachtrag 3. März 2020: Heute wurde im Hörspielmagazin des Deutschlandfunks ein Beitrag von Sarah Murrenhoff zu den Karlruher Postulaten gesendet. Dafür hat die Autorin Martina Müller-Walraff, Leiterin des WDR-Hörspiels, und mich befragt. Nachgehört und -gelesen werden kann der Beitrag hier.

Und darum geht in den Karlsruher Postulaten ganz konkret:

Bechdel-Test for Radio Play

On Nov. 9th at the ARD Hörspieltage in Karlsruhe (GER) I gave a lecture on the Bechdel Test with a special focus on radio plays and about the limitations of the Bechdel test . My presentation was the start of a special theme day looking at the situation of women in cultural institutions two years after the kick-off of the #MeToo movement. After the presentation I participated in a panel discussion with Sabine Hark, Lamya Kaddor, Stefanie Lohaus, Luise F. Pusch und Hilde Weeg. This discussion led to three workshops, which resulted in the „Karlsruher Postulate“ – our demands and commitments how to bring real gender equality along – eventually. For documentation of the special theme day in German see here.

To Hear the Gras Grow – A Climate Activism Podcast

When I designed my podcasting course „Gras wachsen hören“ (or „To Hear the Grass Grow“) at the department of Media Ecology at the University of Potsdam in Germany, I had actually planned to teach my students about John Cage and musical collaborations between humans and fungi, and then go on to do some tricky recordings with them. However, Fridays for Future and the thousands of students striking worldwide each week to stop climate change did not make my students all that interested in aesthetic research, as I had to learn.

Fridays for Future Demonstration on July 19, 2019, in Berlin, Germany. Photo: © maxiwittek.de

Deeply impressed by Greta Thunberg and her committed, inspiring fight for immediate changes in climate policy, the end of fossil fuels, and the reduction of net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2035, the participants in my course preferred to make something more concrete. So we decided to produce a climate-activism podcast. This decision coincided with Thunberg’s visit to Berlin and her support of the local Fridays for Future demonstration on Friday, July 19.

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Radiophonic Spaces: First Transnational Radio Art Exhibition

Opening of Radiophonic Spaces Exhibition at Museum Tinguely, Basel (CH).

Today is a very special day: After many years of envisioning and a couple of years of thorough research and hard work, Nathalie Singer and her team present their Radiophonic Spaces exhibition to the public at Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland. 

Nathalie Singer opening the exhibition Radiophonic Spaces

This “sonic journey through the history of radio art” is unique in many ways: It brings together more than 200 curated pieces of radio art from the last 100 years and from all over the world. Thus it documents the historical and ongoing explorations of the intriguing, ever-changing sound medium radio by artists like Antonin Artaud, John Cage, László Moholy-Nagy through to Michaela MeliánAndreas Ammer, Colin Black, Tetsuo Kogawa and Gregory Whitehead.

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Researching Podcasting in the US

My PhD project focuses on the transition from analogue to digital radio and how works of acoustic art relate to it. Thus, the development of the US-American podcast scene is of special interest for me, as it takes a leading role in the field. The term podcast was first coined in 2004 as a portmanteau of “iPod” and “broadcast” and referred originally to digitally produced and distributed audio programs on the internet, which were published periodically and could be subscribed to via RSS feed. As podcasting is still a rather new media phenomenon and the academic field of podcast studies is just about to emerge, I applied for the 2018 U.S. Embassy SANAS Travel Award to do field research. Altogether my journey lasted 14 days and covered ten interviews in five cities.   

Due to its relevance for US-American radio history and the development of the podcast-scene, I started my research in Chicago. Thanks to the city’s geographic location, the first Chicago radio stations in the 1920s were listened to from the East coast to the Rockies and beyond. Needless to say, that Chicago emerged early on as a broadcasting center and a central switching point for transcontinental network lines, attracting various creative media people. One of them was the legendary radio host Louis “Studs” Terkel (1912 – 2008).

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The Road to Brexit – A Students‘ Podcast

The White Cliffs of Dover (Image: Makiko Itoh/Flickr | CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Just in time for Brexit’s second anniversary, Prof. Ina Habermann at the University of Basel and students of her research seminar published their podcast The Road to Brexit on the historical and cultural preconditions and motifs why so many Britons voted to leave the EU on June 23, 2016. Trained as a professional radio journalist who writes her PhD at the English department in Basel, it was a great pleasure and challenge to help them bring their project alive. Together with Prof. Habermann I edited the texts of the students, I taught them how to speak on the radio and took care of recording, editing and publication of the project. In eleven contributions the students looked for example at Winston Churchill’s war rhetoric as well as at the myth of Dunkirk or the movie T2 Trainspotting and a European perspective at Great Britain.

You can read an article about the project and its background on the website of the university in German or in English. Further information about the project, the production and the contents you can find here. And last but not least you can listen to the podcast here.

I highly recommend to take some time for this podcast. Listening to these 69 minutes of an enlightening fusion of cultural studies research and radio journalism is in my opinion definitely worthwhile. Congratulations to Prof. Habermann and her students, well done! It’s been a blast to work with you.