Lecture „The BBC World Service: International Radio – Made in the UK“, 2015-06-18, University of Basel

Thursday, the 18h of June I will give a lecture on the legendary BBC World Service in the context of a workshop at the University of Basel. The workshop will be on international radio stations in the 20th century and is part of the national research project „Broadcasting Swissness“.

The title of my lecture, which will be in German as the whole workshop, is „The BBC World Service: International Radio – Made in the UK“. It is based on some findings of my Seminar „Special Sound“ about the BBC and the inspiring debates I had with my students in class. One of the results of this BBC seminar is our „Hitchhiker´s Guide to the BBC Radio Galaxy“, in which one of course also finds some information in English on the BBC World Service. In my lecture I will focus much more on the different attempts of delivering the identity concept of „Britishness“ via one of the oldest, largest and most famous radio stations to the world.

Update, 05-08-2015: The programme has been published now. Anyone interested is welcome to join, please just do register in advance.

New Publication: „Noise, soundplay, extended radio“

It is a great pleasure for me to announce that my first scientific article on radio art in English has appeared. After passing the double-blind peer review process of the ECREA Radio Research Section it just has been published in the book „Radio: The Resilient Medium. Papers from the third conference of the ECREA Radio Research Section„, edited by Madalena Oliveira, Grazyna Stachyra and Guy Starkey.

Resilient__RadioAfter I had the great opportunity and pleasure to present my PhD-project at the Radio Research Confernce in September 2013 in London it is of course also a very special pleasure to see the article printed now in English in a book, together with the articles of over 20 other radio researchers from all over the world.  My very special thanks goes to Guy Starkey, Grazyna Stachyra and Madalena Oliveira for the great job they did in editing this wonderful book. Although Mauro José Sá Rego Costa was allowed to translate the article into Portugese and publish it in advance in the online-journal of the State University of Rio de Janero the English version only can be accessed via the book due to the copyright of the publishers to protect their investment in preparing the book for print.

Nevertheless it´s certainly fine to tell the title of my article and to publish the abstract here:

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Lecture on „Absolute Radio Art“ in Cologne

On Monday, the 2nd of Febuary 2015 at 17:45 I will give a lecture in German on the concept of „absolute radio art“ in Cologne.

Its title is

1925 – 1969 – 2015:

Wiederholungen & Differenzen in der Debatte um absolute Radiokunst

This lecture is part of the 7. Dokoranden-Ringvorlesung and takes place from 17:45 to 19:15 at the Hörsaal A2 in the Hörsaalgebäude of the University of Cologne, Universitätsstraße 33, 50931 Köln.

Everyone who is interested is cordially invited to join.

Aliens, UFOs & Earthlings

Today the result of intensive research in the last weeks and months goes on air and online: My 28 minutes long radio feature „Von Aliens, UFOs und Erdlingen – Zur Kulturgeschichte der Außerirdischen“ will be broadcasted by the Swiss public radio station SRF 2 Kultur, afterwards being available as a podcast.

This production was only possible thanks to wonderful reasearchers like film scholar Simon Spiegel, astrophysicist Ben Moore, literature scholars Robert Stockhammer, Hania Siebenpfeiffer and Philipp Theisohn, ethnologist Alice Spinnler and numerous aliens. They are all featured in the show.

Great-Moon-Hoax-1835-New-York-Sun-lithograph-298px

A big thanks also goes to all the others who helped and inspired my work along the way and openend my eyes for so many incredible creatures in and aspects of this universe. These selenites of The Great Moon Hoax from 1835 (see pic the right) are only one example.

A very special thanks goes to Philipp Theisohn and his team at the Swiss national research project „Conditio extraterrestris. The Inhabitated Galaxy as the Space of Literary Imagination and Communication (1600 – 2000)“ at the German Department of the University of Zurich.

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Their amazing research projects probably bore me out the most that humankind is once again changing its sense of self and that we have to think and talk about it. Therefore I also portrayed Conditio extraterrestris additionally in a seperate article and broadcast.

 

 

 

Imagining the Unimaginable

Saturday this week (22nd of November) my seminar „They are amongst us. Towards an intergalactic and interdisciplinary cultural history of aliens“ starts at the department for art research and media philosophy of the art academy HfG Karlsruhe. With art students from different disciplines I will try to find out how and why the unimaginable is imagined the way it is and how, why and when the imagination has changed in history and how all of that depended on the evolution of media.

We will be reading theoretical texts e.g. by Immanuel Kant, Nikola Tesla, Hans Blumenberg, Umberto Eco, Kodwo Eshun, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Joseph Vogl, novels by Stanislaw Lem and H.G. Wells, listen to Orson Welles‘ radio drama „The War of the Worlds“ (1938) and watch movies like „Alien“ by Ridley Scott, „2001: a space odyssey“ (1968) by Stanley Kubrick, „Solaris“ (1972) by Andrei Tarkowski, and „Contact“ (1997) by Robert Zemeckis. Of course this will be for me as a radio researcher one of the highlights:

Weiterlesen

Remember

25 years ago we skipped school and climbed on the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate. From up there we were looking down at armed GDR soldiers who didn´t know anymore what to do. One day before they still had the order to shoot anybody from the East who wanted to climb over the wall to the West. And now everyone from the East was allowed to cross the boarder freely and we, the people from the West, were climbing up on the wall  to celebrate freedom and the end of a dictatorship, to celebrate the success of the resistance movement and to welcome the people of the East. Very poignant memories.

Today there are still many walls in this world existing, separating and excluding people, between Palestine and Israel, between Mexico and the USA, last but not least on the outer boarders of the EU between Africa and Europe.

Weiterlesen

Radio as Art Conference in Bremen

Yesterday evening the „Radio as Art“ conference in Bremen (Germany) was opend with a wonderful keynote lecture of Hank Bull, one of the first artists who considered themselfes explicitly as radio artists. The title of the lecture performance: „The Reception of Electricity.“

Hank Bull making a live radio show.

Hank Bull in actiona, back then and now.

Marcel Duchamp, the radio artist.

Hank Bull explaining how van Gogh invented the light bulb.

It was a live radio show at its best that Hank Bull gave to the audience at the Guest House of the Universität Bremen and the listeners of the four webradios that are connected with the live-stream of Mobile Radio (documentation @ SoundCloud). In combination with recalling the history of the legendary „HP Show“ (1976 to 1984) Hank Bull gave a wonderful overview of the history of electricity starting in the 18th century and tracing it up to our presence. In doing so he showed how philosophers like Marx and Nietzsche missed the revolutionary dimension of electricity, that „killed God“ and gave birth to new „Gods“ through the human imagination like Frankenstein’s monster, Nosferatu and the alien voice.

Weiterlesen

Bugs & Beasts & Beast: My first scientific publication on Hörspiel – in Portuguese.

I am very happy to announce, that my article „RUÍDO, PEÇA SONORA, RÁDIO EXTENDIDO“ just has been published by Polêm!ca Revista Eletrônica, the online-journal of the State University of Rio de Janero (UERJ). It is the extended version of a case study about the Hörspiel (radio play) „Bugs & Beats & Beasts“ by Andreas Ammer and Console, that I presented in September 2013 at the conferences „Noises of Art“ and „Radio Research 2013“ in GB. This Hörspiel plays an important role for the argumentation of my PhD thesis. My very special gratitude goes to Mauro José Sá Rego Costa, professor at the UERJ with special expertise in radio and media art: Mauro, thank you so much for your enthusiasm, your support and especially all the effort you went through in translating this! Bssssssssh.

Enjoy reading – and listening! I would be delighted to recieve some feedback about my ideas from Brazil – and everybody who understands Portuguese. But please, write in English to me!