INTERNATIONALE RADIOKUNST
A series for all lovers of audio art
From Manfred Mixner- chief of Hörspieldepartment of the Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg until 2002, RADIOkultur.
What is audio art? During public performances of new audio art productions, in conversations with our audience after programmes, at seminars and symposia and in discussions with authors, composers, and researchers this question is posed again and again. What follows is a brief attempt to clarify the matter; at the same time we would like to sketch out a kind of programme direction for our audio art series INTERNATIONALE RADIOKUNST.
In the 1960s the media academic Friedrich Knilli coined the term Schallspiel, in order to confront the traditional radio play dramaturgy (the radioplay as a play on an inner stage) with a modern concept of radiophonic art. In the 1970s the term Neues Hörspiel made its way, particularly for those pieces, which could be worked out using the methods of the then popular literary styles, concrete poetry, for example fundamentally, however, that was a tie of the radio play with literature according to past values and no endorsement of the Knilliesque utopia of the Totales Schallspiel. Only in the 1980s did a detachment of those productions from the affiliation to the literature genre appear to take place with the terms acoustic art or ars acustica, within which the toying with the radiophonic materials of language, sounds, and music moved further and further away from realistic conceptions.
What was actually meant with these expressions at that time were mainly experimental radio plays and sound poetry, but also radio plays by composers and media artists. In the 1990s new possibilities of sound processing were used, also because of the rapid development of digital production technologies, and the term sound art or Klangkunst emerged. This describes works, within which the old frontiers of music, literature, and creative arts were done away with. The radio retained its important function in this artistic development: as a production site, as a forum for discussion, publication, mediation, and not least as a sponsor.
Our understanding of RADIO ART is a very pragmatic one: whatever can be mediated as akustische Zeitkunst or Raumkunst, as sound art or telematic art by radio, is the object of our programme series INTERNATIONALE RADIOKUNST. We do not view ourselves as a sublime theatre for high art, we simply would like to inform: we want to present our audience that acoustic art, which is developing these days in the various regions of this world. We will do so using examples, anthology programmes or by presenting single works. We are not judges of art, but rather report about current sound art events and tendencies, whereby, naturally, Berlin is the centre of the world for us, not only because we are the broadcasting house of the Land, but particularly because Berlin has become an internationally noticed and attractive centre for sound art thanks to the activities of the Akademie der Künste, the artists programme of the German Academic Exchange Programme (DAAD), the electronic studios at the Technical University of Berlin, the HdK (Berlin college for arts), the Berlin society for Neue Musik, and many individual initiatives of galleries, clubs, and institutions.
We are curious about what takes place on the scene right now, we are interested in the history of acoustic art, sound poetry and experimental radio plays, frontier crossings by the composers of Neue Musik, sound installations and sound sculptures, and creative artists, too; we visit sound galleries, universities and private studios, observe the works of sound artists in the internet and present sound art publications.
And we do not only present special works by artists on air” but sometimes also on stage”. The RBB-Klanggalerie is an example, in the Haus des Rundfunks” (RBBs broadcasting house) in the Masurenallee 8-14, in operation weekdays from 10am until 5pm.
INTERNATIONALE RADIOKUNST Every second Friday at 10pm in the RBB broadcasting programme RADIOkultur FM 92,4