Wolfgang Hagen: BEYOND RADIO - 1.A medium between war and digitalization

"For the intensely literate population, however", says Marshall McLuhan, "radio engendered a profound unlocalizable sense of guilt that sometimes expressed itself in the fellow traveller attitude. A newly found human involvement bred anxiety and insecurity and unpredictability."[1] Guilt, fear and uncertainty. More sober contemporaries like Bert Brecht have also formulated quite similarly: "I immediately had the terrible impression about radio", he says in his text on radio theory, "that it is an unimaginably old contraption, that was long ago forgotten during the turbulences of the great flood."[2] Regarded philologically, this sentence is an excellent example of the effects of the traces military technologies left in the media. The First World War as a great flood which washed away all memory of from where this medium came. Namely, from the First World War. [3]

"Sit down. Before you stands a trumpet speaker.
Just a dial. If you turn it without hesitation,
A poet from a distant city to you will speak,
Words that you otherwise never understand.
Turn the dial! Who will answer?
Whom will you reach with your magic call?
Will it be the dead heroes that send an answer?
The chirping of birds in an interval.
Turn it again and the voice dwindles,
And jubilation fills the ether.
He who feels no wonder now,
Hears not his OWN heart rejoice therein.
And you hear a man's voice near,
And he stands in the middle of your room:
Lenin speaks, the man who came and saw,
And the peoples followed in his path.
Yes in winter the nights are long,
Our log cabin lies far from the city.
Sometimes a noise still resounds from the walls,
After sleep has long since embraced us

Turn the dial! Who will tomorrow answer?
Will the dead heroes send a reply?" [4]

Franz Werfel: "The unlimited moral value of radio broadcasting consists of its ability to elevate the great majority of dull people from base bodily interests to more differentiated spiritual experiences." [5]

Karl Kraus answers laconically in his two-liner:
"Great salvation has reached the world around us:
The caretaker is now connected to the cosmos." [6]

The pitfalls of the new medium, its scary origination out of nothingness, its undirected omnipresenee and universality foree the writers of the twenties into using earthquake-like metaphors, apoealyptic images and always toward nationalistie pride.

Once again Karl Kraus:
"Has human thought so stirred up nature
That from everything that gives off sound
She is forced to pour into mankind's deaf ear?
Which faculty measure in all-consuming pleasure
As she hears music from all the spheres
But nothing from misfortune groaning there."[7]

In these early times, radio brings the world into the house much like television does today. It brings colonialistic ersatz gratification into the horne, the polar seas as well as the Bedouins in the desert, the Negroes from Harlem, and the poor natives from the South Sea Islands. And for all that still reflects on itself like an unresolved urge that is pushed by vague powers.

Wolfgang Hagen: "beyONd RADIO" [1] A medium between war and digitalization
Radio is to be discussed here in an environment in which I suspect the medium to be not totally unknown. 80% of an average population of an average western European country listens to radio sametime during the day and statistically consume this most widely used medium on the average of over three hours a day. I would like to talk for much less time than that about radio without at the moment being on the radio and yet; precisely this probably misses the point. To talk about radio without being on the radio is like trying to smile while wearing a rigid mask. This should not be considered an excuse for all the speculations and sketchy insinuations which await you in the following. But at the very beginning I would Iike to point out to you the strange effect of mistaken identity, embarrassment, excuse and even guilt that always adheres to radio, much as if I were to have a radio jingling along next to me now during my talk, which I actually should do. And only refrain from doing because you are ill-prepared or such a pitiful Flux experiment. "For the intensely literate population, however", says Marshall McLuhan, "radio engendered a profound unlocalizable sense of guilt that sometimes expressed itself in the fellow traveller attitude. A newly found human involvement bred anxiety and insecurity and unpredictability."[1] Guilt, fear and uncertainty. More sober contemporaries like Bert Brecht have also formulated quite similarly: "I immediately had the terrible impression about radio", he says in his text on radio theory, "that it is an unimaginably old contraption, that was long ago forgotten during the turbulences of the great flood."[2] Regarded philologically, this sentence is an excellent example of the effects of the traces military technologies left in the media. The First World War as a great flood which washed away all memory of from where this medium came. Namely, from the First World War. [3] Johannes R. Becher: "Sit down. Before you stands a trumpet speaker. Just a dial. If you turn it without hesitation, A poet from a distant city to you will speak, Words that you otherwise never understand. Turn the dial! Who will answer? Whom will you reach with your magic call? Will it be the dead heroes that send an answer? The chirping of birds in an interval. Turn it again and the voice dwindles, And jubilation fills the ether. He who feels no wonder now, Hears not his OWN heart rejoice therein. And you hear a man's voice near, And he stands in the middle of your room: Lenin speaks, the man who came and saw, And the peoples followed in his path. Yes in winter the nights are long, Our log cabin lies far from the city. Sometimes a noise still resounds from the walls, After sleep has long since embraced us Turn the dial! Who will tomorrow answer? Will the dead heroes send a reply?" [4] Franz Werfel: "The unlimited moral value of radio broadcasting consists of its ability to elevate the great majority of dull people from base bodily interests to more differentiated spiritual experiences." [5] Karl Kraus answers laconically in his two-liner: "Great salvation has reached the world around us: The caretaker is now connected to the cosmos." [6] The pitfalls of the new medium, its scary origination out of nothingness, its undirected omnipresenee and universality foree the writers of the twenties into using earthquake-like metaphors, apoealyptic images and always toward nationalistie pride. Once again Karl Kraus: "Has human thought so stirred up nature That from everything that gives off sound She is forced to pour into mankind's deaf ear? Which faculty measure in all-consuming pleasure As she hears music from all the spheres But nothing from misfortune groaning there."[7] In these early times, radio brings the world into the house much like television does today. It brings colonialistic ersatz gratification into the horne, the polar seas as well as the Bedouins in the desert, the Negroes from Harlem, and the poor natives from the South Sea Islands. And for all that still reflects on itself like an unresolved urge that is pushed by vague powers.	FOOTNOTES: [1] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, Toronto and London 1964, p. 321 [2] Berthold Brecht, Radiolheorie, in: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 18, Frankfurt 1967, p. 11 [3] Does guilt and its subconscious effect enter radio because radio as we know it, entertainment broadcasting, was everywhere, in Austria as in America, in England as in Germany, nothing more thon a clever recycling of abandoned military equipment? "A frivolous use of a national service", as English military officers initially said, (quoted from: Victor Egert, loc. cit., p. 23) to which the honour of the fallen heroes is still bound? [4] Quoted from Irmela Schneider (Hrg), Radio-kultur in der Weimarer Republik - Eine Dokumentation, Tübingen 1984, p. 58 ff. The dead talk to us from the radio. It was thus whispered and rhymed from the radio, in 1925, certainly exaggerated, but as we can see today with a rather obvious truth. Wilhelm Hoffmann, a Heidegger scholar and radio director of the early audio pieces by Elisabeth Langgässer, laconieally formulated it thus at the end of the 20s: "A primary radio theme is death". (Wilhelm Hoffman, Vom Wesen des Funkspiels, in: Gerhard Hay (Hrg), Literatur und Rundfunk, Hildesheim 1975, p. 37) We find this involvement with death in the radio a last time in the "seminaires" written in the 50's by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; he turns over the lethal metaphors that come in, on, or out of the radio, once more, a final time, so to say, on its own axis. lt is not we who hear more in radio than we hear, no - in radio we talk to the dead: "A radio essay is really held in a very special form of speech, as much as it is directed by an invisible speaker at an invisible mass of listeners. One can say that in the fantasy of the speaker, it is not necessarily directed at those who listen to it, but also at everyone, at the living as weil a .. at the dead." (Jacques Lacan, Freuds technische Schriften, alten 1978, p. 44) I am saying and quoting all these things to you not because I believe that such theses will be immediately apparent to you. How should it be, in light of such an oppressively harmless frivolity as offered by our daily light programmes, that we talk of guilt or death? But as lacking in pathos, as naive and regressive today's light programming bounces along on Ö3 or Radio Bremen Vier, it should be seen that in its beginnings, the medium was understood or misunderstood to be full of pathos, cosmogenics and phantasmagorio, and it is to be explained why,for example in the 20's, almost all literati and intellectuals were captivated by this medial cosmology, and it is to be seen where the further development of radio will lead us. [5] Viktor Egert, 50 fahre Rundfunk in Österreich, Bd.1, Wien 1974, p. 12 [6] ibid., p. 12 [7] Irmelia Schneider, loc. cit., p. 37
< *back*[2] "Cloak of Invisibiloity"