I Speak Radio E-Book

Anna Bromley

• Herausgeber: EECLECTIC
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Scriptings: Political Scenarios
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 268

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Seit 2010 lädt Anna Bromley Künstler*innen, Aktivist*innen und Kulturforscher*innen in das Radiostudio ein, um gemeinsam über Sprache und Stimme im Kontext von Sound, Politik und Alltag nachzudenken. Was als Recherche-Format in einem Künstler*innen-Radio begann, wurde über die Jahre zu eigenständigen Ausstellungsbeiträgen, die das Radio und seine sicht- und unsichtbaren Übertragungskörper in den Blick bzw. in die Ohrmuschel nehmen. Die Publikation spiegelt Bromleys kollaborative Radiopraxis durch den erstmaligen Abdruck einer Auswahl ihrer radiophonen Essays. Darüber hinaus gibt die Publikation einen Einblick in die damit verbundenen Ausstellungsformate, die ebenso die Zusammenarbeit mit einer großen Anzahl an Künstler*innen, Aktivist*innen, Radiomacher*innen und Theoretiker*innen einschließt. Als Insert enthält das Buch einen Bild- und Textindex zu Bromleys weiteren künstlerischen Arbeiten. I Speak Radio eröffnet mit Bromleys gleichnamigem multimedialen Essay zur feministischen Aneignung der jungen Radiotechnik in den 1920er Jahren. Den Hauptteil des Buches bildet die Arbeit A Voice Exists in Voicing, eine Serie von Radioessays und sonischen Portraits mit der Bromley im Sommer 2022 das Manifesta-Radio in Prishtina eröffnet hat. Als visuelles Element entstand hierzu begleitend eine Zeichnungsserie von Michael Fesca, welche ebenfalls in der Publikation zu finden ist. Eine kontextualisierende Einführung in A Voice Exists in Voicing bieten die Texte von Catherine Nichols und Hedwig Fijen. Mit der Medienaktivistin Diana McCarty führt Bromley schließlich ein Gespräch über die Politiken von ansteckenden Radiostimmen und um kritische Perspektiven auf das Medium Radio in Kunstausstellungen. Ergänzend zur Print-Version können im E-Book Audioausschnitte aus I Speak Radio und A Voice Exists in Voicing gehört werden. Das E-Book enthält zudem zwei weitere Texte: ein Gespräch zwischen Bromley, Brandon LaBelle und Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung und eine komprimierte Textform von Red Forests „Radiogram #3: The Enchanted Technologies of Transmission“, in der neben Anna Bromley auch Diana McCarty, Tetsuo Kogawa, Alla Mitrofanova und JD Zazie als wichtige Weggefährt*innen und Inspiration zu Wort kommen.

Leseprobe

Anna Bromley

I Speak Radio

Edited by Achim Lengerer and Michael Fesca

Published by

SCRIPTINGS

and

EECLECTIC

My friend Camilla bursts into my room. “Dora, is it true that you’ll be speaking on the radio?”

“Yeah, how about that? ... Just a voice, detached from the body ... has its own particular charm, doesn’t it?”

“Well, that depends on the voice,” says Camilla skeptically.

“You’re right about that. I think we should put much more emphasis on beautiful speaking voices – for the radio ...”

“All right, then. Though you strike me as hopelessly radioed out.”

“I’ll tell you – on the air, I would put a woman, a woman of today, one whose story plays out in dialogues, a woman who experiences ... the things that affects us all ... And definitely in dialogue form, to make it easier for the listener. I always find it difficult to distinguish between more than two or, at most, three voices on the radio.

Dora Dery, “Ich spreche funk ...” Der Deutsche Rundfunk: Funk-Post, no. 49 (1928): 3317.

Translated from German by Anita Di Bianco

Index

I Speak Radio

Anna Bromley

A Voice Exists in Voicing

Anna Bromley

With drawn annotations by Michael Fesca

Afterword by Hedwig Fijen

Selected Works 2011-23

Anna Bromley

With Every Step, the World Comes to the Walker

Catherine Nichols

“On the radio, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

Anna Bromley and Diana McCarty

Radiogram #3: The Enchanted Technologies of Transmission

Anna Bromley, Tetsuo Kogawa, Alla Mitrofanova, and JD Zazie, hosted by Diana McCarty

Laugh of the Hyposubject

A conversation between Anna Bromley, Brandon LaBelle, and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

I Speak Radio

Anna Bromley

A

Electro-buzz.

Anna Bromley: Hello? Hello, I’m here – in a room, a beam of light shines on my script, it expands out to the gray partition wall and stops there. Thousands of greenish, bluish, and golden points of light swarm over the surface of the insulation. Their sparkling surrounds me as I speak to you here in this soundproofed recording booth.

Textbooks on radio broadcasting recommend deepening your voice. That’s what I’m doing now. Dropping my voice as low as I can, bringing my lips quite close to the microphone. That’s what the (rarely non-cismale) studio technicians are always telling me to do.

Ooh, careful, I’m getting very close to your ear now. To the skin on the inside of your auricle, which is seamlessly connected to your nasal cavity, to the oral cavity, and continues from there as an internal membrane. With the headphones you’re wearing, I’m already pretty close to your auricle. These headphones also connect you to the twelve young people in the walnut-colored frame on the wall. The photo captures them in the act of listening. To music. To a ragtime piece called “Dardanella.”

A soaring, high note sounds.

The tone sequence accelerates.

It transforms into a fragment of a 1919 recording of the song “Dardanella.”1

This sequence deconstructs immediately into spherical, floating tones.

I discovered the historical photograph in British media scientist Kate Lacey’s research collection. She had originally found it in the May 1920 issue of the American magazine Amateur Radio News. Above the image is the article’s title: “Dancing by Radiophone.”2 Wearing headphones and standing around a huge DIY radio receiver, they’re listening to a ragtime tune live transmitted from a club two miles away where the Georgia Tech band is playing. The group swings into action. They’re about to dance.

The chorus of “Dardanella” flashes up for a few seconds.

Ben Selvin fiddles: Daaaa, dadadadadadadadaaaaa. Dadadadadadadadaaaaaaa.

High-pitched electronic sound drowns out the music.

The article describes the “First Radiophone Dance” – an experiment by a reserve sergeant using “a very sensitive diaphragm and a two-step amplifier receiving set.” According to Radio Amateur News:

The young folks (…) are equipt with a pair of radio-receiving head phones and connecting cords suspended from various parts of the room, thus enabling them to cover a considerable part of the floor. It will also be noted that the set was furnished with a loud-speaking telephone, whereby nearby persons not equipt with receivers could hear the music as well.3

A short sequence from the refrain of “Dardanella” plays in the background, slowed down considerably.

The widespread introduction of radio at the beginning of the twentieth century opened up completely new ways of listening. As well as new policies of governance.

B

Short, high-pitched radio signal.

Just four years after the report from Atlanta, Berlin’s renowned Voss, the Vossische Zeitung, published a photo that was to become world-famous: A loudspeaker perched on the window sill of a Berlin café in May 1924. Facing outward, towards Potsdamer Platz, or more precisely, towards the crowd gathered directly below the café window. The camera, guided by the anti-fascist photographer John Graudenz, peers over the shoulder of its bell-shaped body.

Looped ambient noise from a 1920s 78 rpm record.

Ends after a few seconds with a crackling sound.

From a slightly elevated perspective, the camera follows the sound, gliding towards the many bodies and faces extending from the left to the right edge of the window, and from the window sill out over the expanse of the square.

Looped ambient noise from another 1920s archival sound recording.

Ends abruptly.

The position corresponds roughly to the view here from the window. Imagine you are looking out over Potsdamer Platz, buses driving by, the areas to the right and left of the street are lined with people. You’d be standing directly behind the loudspeaker, broadcasting the results of the second Reichstag election. A spectacular scene unfolding before you. Were they all there to get the results of the Reichstag elections firsthand, before the newspapers could report them? So, was it about a head start on the information, the thrill of the temporal shift forward?

Excerpt of archival recording from 1923, Vox-Haus on Berlin’s Potsdamer Straße 4. Friedrich Georg Knöpfke’s voice says, “Attention, attention!”4

In media history debates, this photo is often interpreted as an expression of the typical Berlin radio mania of the time. An image of a caesura, after which radio became the leading mass medium.

Friedrich Georg Knöpfke’s voice says, “Next up …”5

Such public listening is frequently compared to the diffusion of the internet. In the same year, singer Claire Waldoff landed one of her many hits:

High, drawn-out tremolo synthesized from the piano accompaniment of Claire Waldoff’s “O Marianka.”6

O Marianka, come to the Banka. Two years after this radiophonic election, her voice rings out of the Reichstag with the men – a hit song written for her by Friedrich Hollaender, a composer and key figure in Berlin’s cabaret scene. This election, whose results were being awaited by those gathered, marked only the second one in which women took part.*

* The words “woman” and “man” are used in these texts as categories central to the early feminist struggles for social participation, self-determination and equal treatment, and whose contingency and fluidity, from today’s perspective, are beyond question.

C

Midrange frequency sine wave beats, rapidly oscillating.

Fading.

I find myself just as astonished as Kate Lacey, at how the introduction of widespread radio listening is so seldom linked to the struggles of the early feminist movement.

The 1908 voice of Christabel Pankhurst says, “They must be compelled by a united and determined women’s movement to do justice in this measure.”7

I had become quite accustomed to this before stumbling upon Lacey’s research.

Low-range frequency sine wave fades in.

Ends after a few seconds with a hard cut.

By 1924, women had been in the workforce for almost a decade. As part of the general mobilization for World War I, they were trained for and assigned to well-paid jobs in the heavy metal industry. For example, the woman in a photo in the archive folder. This photo is to be found in the archive of the Spandau City History Museum, located here in the Citadel. She was photographed in 1917, at work in the army foundry weighing out metal balls that she then places into shell casings. In the course of the so-called demobilization of 1918 and ’19, new legal regulations led to the gradual dismissal of women from industrial work. But that was not enough to turn the clock back on gender relations. In 1919, thirty-seven women entered parliament.

Martha Arendsee’s 1928 voice says: “There are eleven million women in the workforce!”8

The welfare system was introduced, thus relieving at least some of the burden on wives, daughters, and other female family members – all of whom were customarily expected to perform unpaid family care work.

Martha Arendsee states circumspectly, “The triple burden – wage labor, housework, and children – leaves you little time to read the newspaper …”9

But women’s gains in visibility and opportunities were offset by the inflation resulting from the financial burdens of World War I. After 1921, individual savings collapsed and, with the sharp rise in unemployment, even previously better-off segments of the population found themselves homeless. The press blamed widespread economic and social instability on women’s burgeoning economic independence, as well as on the liberalization of lifestyles. Physical and symbolic violence against women increased; the decline of the nation and of the imagined “body of the people” was attributed to women’s self-determination in matters of sexuality.

Radio was introduced in Germany at the end of 1923, just as inflation reached a temporary peak. On October 29th, the first German radio program was broadcast from Berlin’s VOX house, a short distance from Potsdamer Platz.

Friedrich Georg Knöpfke’s voice, saying, “Here is Berlin …”10

From reading Lacey’s work, it seems that early radio listening took place in communal situations and in public spaces, that is, outside of private homes. In Berlin and Frankfurt press archives, she found eyewitness accounts of radio halls and listening publics. Based on these sources, she speculates on feminist radio theaters, where women could have gathered, shared information, and organized. Public radio listening allowed the enormously expensive equipment and monthly fees to be shared among the group, at the same time opening up a new sphere of activity for war-injured technophiles. They soldered the speakers and receivers themselves. The craze in Berlin at the time wasn’t just for radio but for DIY more generally, as evidenced by the ham radio newsletter Radiobastelpost.

D

A ragtime fades in for two seconds.

Towards the end of the 1920s, Walter Arlt, sales manager of the Berlin specialty store Radio Arlt, sent out the first issue of Bastelpost. He wrote:

… People say that because manufacturers supply their products so cheaply, it’s inevitable that DIY has dwindled in popularity and will continue to do so, since it’s impossible to build things yourself at the same price as they do, let alone cheaper. We assert the opposite, that it’s still possible to build things yourself more cheaply than manufacturers can, and that DIY is far from over. […] And on this basis, we have stocked a whole range of very important do-it-yourself parts for hobbyists, giving them the opportunity to build many things themselves at low cost.

Although this inclination of ours is clearly at odds with the interests of the industry, we cannot allow ourselves to be influenced by this; we will gladly accept the consequences in order to meet the needs of our customers, most of whom are hobbyists. We are sure that this will be very popular among DIY enthusiasts and thus hope for the active support from our customers – enabling us to move forward and expand our business, which in turn will make us more efficient. Even the smallest order will be of benefit to us.11

I found the booklet for hobbyists in an antiquarian bookshop, which dated it to 1925. But my first estimation was that it’s somewhat older, as numerous emergency decrees permitting house searches for improvised radio sets were issued as early as 1924. Unauthorized tampering with radio receivers, which enabled the early devices to be turned into transmitters, was now considered a criminal offence. It has since been brought to my attention that the electronic components depicted in the booklet’s illustrations were first developed in 1928 or ’29.

Ascending, electronic glissando.

It slows down and is transformed into a sequence of drawn-out sounds.

Perhaps the woman in the photo in the archive file was one of the customers of the Berlin electronics store. After losing her job in the factory in favor of a male worker, she spends her spare time, and perhaps also her savings, assembling radio equipment. She still lives with her parents and has no plans to get married. She may or may not be heterosexual. When she was born, someone said: it’s a girl – or maybe not. In any case, what she really wants is to earn her own money and move into her own apartment. Out of her parents’ apartment, with the radio she soldered together for them droning on. She goes outside, out of the house, into the yard, into the open air.

And that’s what I suggest you do now – with me in your ear. Take the stairs down to the courtyard. Then walk along the armory until you reach the front of the Spandau City History Museum. Go all the way to the back. Turn right, around the corner. You’ll then be standing in front of a larger-than-life photographic print. You can switch me off in the meantime. You can simply turn the following part of the audio essay back on again, once you’re standing in front of the photograph.

E

Original sounds of a street protest in Berlin in the 1920s.

See the lathe and the larger-than-life photograph behind it? Ah, voilà – you’ve arrived! You should now be looking into the factory hall shown in the photograph.

On the right: lathes. One after another, women with pinned-up hair examining metal axles.

The descriptive plaque to the right of the photograph tells you that the electronics industry and vehicle manufacture settled along Spandau’s waterways and railroad tracks. The skirt length and hairstyles of the women in the photo suggest that it was taken in the early 1920s, at the latest – and more likely around 1915.

On the fact that an unusually large number of women can be seen at work in the factory hall at the beginning of the last century – and what this has to do with the industry of the time, its laws, gender, migration, and class – the descriptive text has nothing to say. Among the objects on display in the Citadel, the picture takes on a particular significance because, unlike most of the other objects, it does not tell of masculine networks and their military and technical history, instead showing pinned-up hairstyles and long skirts at machines. This early involvement of women in industrial metalworking was the first time that a large number of women earned exceptionally good wages. While men suffered World War I at the front, women were trained and employed in machine assembly. It was not until shortly after the end of the war, in 1919, that the situation changed. Married women were initially made redundant in armaments factories as well as in the private sector, and in government agencies and offices. The number of divorces increased just as rapidly as unemployment rates among women. After earning good wages in industry, many women refused to perform unpaid domestic labor.

Taking a ten-year leap in time – I suggest that you make your way back across the courtyard to the exhibition room.

F

A few seconds of Ben Selvin’s instrumental ragtime interlude from “Dardanella.”

About a decade after the photo was taken, the union-won, eight-hour working day from 1918 was abolished by one of the numerous emergency decrees issued at the time. Women were particularly affected by these emergency directives, as they were to be dismissed. There was a wide-ranging wave of layoffs. Nevertheless, more than a third of them managed to find other employment. A small number found jobs in the poorly ventilated factory buildings of Berlin’s electrical and textile industries, while the majority ended up working in dark offices or department stores. There was hardly any protection for pregnant women against dismissal, nor were there any other basic labor rights. They earned roughly two-thirds of the wage of a male who did the same job. Unemployment benefits were also set much lower for women, and if they were married, they were often even denied them.

In the Reichstag, fierce debates raged over a proposed education law. The ruling coalition dissolved during these deliberations, setting off a new election campaign in the spring of 1928. In what was then the Weimar Republic, this fifth round of elections in which women could vote coincided with the tenth anniversary of women’s suffrage.

Martha Arendsee’s energetic voice: “Countrywomen, city-women, girls! Again, the call to vote goes out to you! […] How much longer will you women tolerate such conditions?”12

In the same 1928 election campaign, Toni Sender declares, “Most of us forgo even necessary things, not to mention anything extra, isn’t that so? And imagine that in the last election campaign, all of the parties promised to improve our lot.”13

And Marie Arning pleads, “There ought not be any woman today who does not exercise her right to vote!”14

By the spring of 1928, radio broadcasting had been widespread for about five years. From the program descriptions of the time, I learn that a wide variety of authors regularly presented their literary works on the radio. I come across names from very different generations of writers: Else Lasker-Schüler, who was sixty at the time, alongside Gertrud Kolmar, then around thirty-five, and newcomers around twenty, such as Mascha Kaléko.

These literary programs were probably considered apolitical by the broadcasting authorities, and as such were of the few types of talk programs that were allowed during this period. To prevent political debates from being aired on the radio, the broadcast authority banned all improvised and open formats from 1924 onwards. This authority, which had been specifically established to monitor broadcast content, was tasked with ensuring that radio remained apolitical. The guidelines: Liveness was dangerous! No politicians on the radio! But feminist campaign speakers in the 1928 election campaign found ways around this. Record production became increasingly cheaper, so politicians had their election speeches pressed onto records, which they played in cars parked in several places in the city simultaneously. Martha Arendsee, Toni Sender, and Marie Arning, to name but a few, could now be heard as people walked past.

Toni Sender: “But you might ask – what use is voting to us? Look at the Parliament – what has it brought us in recent years? Are we better off than we used to be? Haven’t we suffered from ever-increasing inflation?”15

Marie Arning: “She is fighting for an eight-hour day. And for fair pay for workers. For decent housing with enough space, light, air, and sun. She is working to eliminate the disenfranchisement of women in all areas. Women – do not hesitate! Join our struggle!”16

The politics of lyrical language also survived for a while in the literature program. And there were obviously plenty of feminist voices. Not long after the election campaign, the very young Mascha Kaléko read on the radio from the manuscript of her forthcoming book of poems, later published under the title Das lyrische Stenogrammheft (The lyrical steno pad). These self-deprecating poems tell of her constant failure to embody the image of an independent, sexy 1920s girl – from her perspective as an office worker. In the grind of the rigorous work week, she comes to realize that such desire is one reserved for wealthier people. While in her own life, the poet notes, eroticism must be limited to Sundays off.

Ben Selvin’s ragtime instrumental flashes up again.

It slows down and is choked off, as if the power of a record player had failed.

In Das lyrische Stenogrammheft, the radio is considered an irritating triviality. A gizmo that, as Kaléko notes, chatters on from the early morning17 and drones on to sleep late at night.18 Kaléko makes no secret of how apolitical, and therefore uninteresting, this technological device is to her. At best, the author finds it useful for birthday dance music.19 Because of the requirement to remain apolitical, radio stations mainly broadcast light music, which was already available on record albums. From Kate Lacey’s media history research, I learn about the heteronormative representations of femininity disseminated by early radio. Mothers, in particular, were targeted in an attempt to make domesticity, care work, and middle-class leisure culture seem more palatable to them. If you take Kaléko’s idea further, then radio at the end of the 1920s was a chattering and droning backlash!

In contrast, however, the internet spits out quite a few images of resistant radio technicians! And also from those early radio years. Perhaps today they would call themselves feminist hackers. In my first image search, I come across several photographs from the beginning of the last century showing radio operators that I read as women. However, these photos are not from Berlin or Europe. In 1909, the San Francisco Daily News printed a photo of Anna Nevins at work at the Wireless Telegraph Company. And another, from 1910, shows radio operator Graynella Packer in uniform in the belly of a steamship. She sits alone in the tubular room, engrossed in the signals she is transmitting across the Atlantic. Two years later, on-board radio operator Edith Combs could receive them in the North Pacific.

Evidently, the job requirements included mastering the telegraphic code – a skill in which women, who often worked as telegraph operators, were already well-versed. There was plenty of training for the additional technical skills required, such as for the function, maintenance, and repair of equipment.

In the series of images of early radio technicians, one photo from 1922 stands out. Florence Violet McKenzie appears to be sitting more for a studio portrait than in a workspace like the others. The camera-eye captures McKenzie seated at a kitchen table, holding a pencil stub in her right hand. It’s hard to tell whether she’s writing or drawing. Her pencil touches a smaller piece of paper, on a patterned tablecloth in front of a glossy lacquer wall. The electronics technician looks down, but it’s not as if she’s looking away from her piece of paper.

Anna’s distorted voice: “She’s immersed in the sounds from the headphones.”

The photo shows how stations and broadcasts were sought out and found during this time. Because the station dial had not yet been calibrated – there were no knobs on which frequency numbers could be set – radio stations were found by improvised turning and trial and error. Once a radio station was found, the exact setting of the dial was noted. McKenzie is probably doing just that in the photo. She is in her thirties, shortly before she became an influential advocate of feminist radio, offering women training to become electronic engineers and radio technicians. When an electronics store owner in Sydney sold his business, McKenzie took it over along with its whole inventory. Her newly opened “wireless store” was well-received, and when she took stock, she realized that many women were also regular customers. She founded a women’s radio club and later on also a women’s radio college; for her it was a matter of principle: “To see every woman emancipated from the ‘heavy’ work of the household by the aid of electricity is in itself a worthy object.”20

In 1924, she was invited by a California radio station to talk about her gender in the world of electro-technology. But she used the airtime for a completely different purpose, preferring to explain the difference between the streetcar systems in San Francisco and Sydney. Because of her passion for physics, she maintained a lively correspondence with Albert Einstein. And that brings us back here – to Berlin-Spandau, where in 1924 Einstein himself received a warning from Spandau’s district office. It cautioned that he should tidy up his allotment garden on the banks of the Havel. Berlin-Spandau was one of the most important locations for the then still relatively new garden allotments for workers, set up by the German Red Cross starting in 1904. Such allotments were likely among the most important places in the 1920s for sharing knowledge about radio technology. Even against the backdrop of the repressive regulations that sought to prevent “unauthorized radio tinkering,” this was still possible in practice – for anyone who belonged to a club.

Kate Lacey found evidence of women’s radio groups in Berlin who listened to programs broadcast in German by Radio Moscow. They were, for example, able to find out about abortion, which was already legalized there. But why doesn’t the internet spit out any pictures of these groups? And only after a very long search do I come across any photos of non-male producers of early German-language radio. In Lacey’s bibliography, I also find references to magazine articles from the late 1920s, in which female radio editors, writers, and presenters reflected on their work. Even if their recordings did not end up in the archives, that is, even if these documents were not preserved, their voices spill over from that time into our present. They tell of communal radio listening that found shelter under the roofs of workers’ radio clubs and trade unions, practiced in feminist organizations and leafy garden colonies. From their radio thicket full of craziness, unleashed sounds, and nonnormative tongues, they will forever and ever tell us:

I speak radio!

Second from a Claire Waldoff piano intro.

Changes into a high, pulsing frequency

1 Selvin’s Novelty Orchestra, “Dardanella,” recorded in NYC, November 20, 1919. Composed by Felix Bernard and Johnny S. Black. 78 rpm single, issued on Victor 18633.

2 Unknown author, “Dancing by Radiophone,” Radio Amateur News: The 100% Wireless Magazine 1, no. 11 (1920): 612.

3 Ibid.

4 Friedrich Georg Knöpfke, “Hier ist Berlin, Voxhaus,” in Hör doch mal hin … Fundstücke aus den Rundfunkarchiven in der Bertramstraße, ed. Anke Leenings and Michael Crone (Frankfurt/Main: Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv and Hessischer Rundfunk, 1997). Original recording 1923/24.

5 Ibid.

6 Claire Waldoff, “Oh Marianka! Komm auf die Banka,” Deutsche Grammophon 1315at, Gr 14844 (NE 05/1924).

7 Excerpt from Pankhurst’s speech “Suffrage for Women,” London, December 18, 1908, 12-inch record, 78 rpm, recorded by William Gaisberg (London: British Library Sound Archive).

8 Martha Arendsee, “Für die KPD,” in Reden, Rezitationen, Reportagen 1920 bis 1930: Ansprachen anläßlich der Reichstagswahl am 20. Mai 1928, ed. DHM – Deutsches Historisches Museum, DRA – Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, and Institut für Sprechwissenschaft und Phonetik, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (Frankfurt/Main: DRA, 2004).

9 Ibid.

10 Knöpfke, “Hier ist Berlin.”

11 Walter Arlt, “An alle, die es angeht!” (To whom it may concern!), Arlt’s Radiobastelpost, no. 1 (ca. 1929): 3.

12 Arendsee, “Für die KPD.”

13 Toni Sender, “Ansprache für die SPD anläßlich der Reichstagswahl am 20. Mai 1928,” in Weimar – das Scheitern einer Demokratie: Tonaufnahmen von 1918 bis 1932, ed. Deutsches Historisches Museum and Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv (Frankfurt/Main: DRA, 2000).

14 Marie Arning, “Für die SPD,” in Reden, Rezitationen, Reportagen 1920 bis 1930.

15 Sender, “Ansprache für die SPD.”

16 Marie Arning, “Für die SPD.”

17 Mascha Kaléko, Das lyrische Stenogrammheft: Verse vom Alltag (Frankfurt/Main: Rowohlt, 1956), 25. First edition: Berlin, 1933.

18 Ibid., 170.

19 Ibid., 36.

20 Florence Violet McKenzie, “What Have the Ladies to Say?” The Contactor (November 8, 1935): 7.

Credits

Pigment prints: Termindruck Berlin. Heliogravure: Engraving print studio at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Berlin, Gloria Alonso. Frames: Kunst und Rahmen Alexandra Erlhoff. Voice recordings: Media workshop at the Kunstquartier-Bethanien Berlin, Manfred Miersch. Dramaturgy and sound editing: Michael Fesca. Concept, text, voice-overs, digital sound syntheses, and direction: Anna Bromley, 2023.

This text is informed by Kate Lacey’s essay “Öffentliches Zuhören: Eine alternative Geschichte des Radiohörens,” in Politiken der Medien, ed. Daniel Gethmann and Markus Stauff (Zürich and Berlin: diaphanes, 2005), 195–208. It refers to the following historic photographs:

Part A

“Young Atlanta Folks About to ‘Trot’ Along to the Tune of ‘Dardanella,’ Each One Equipt with the Familiar Headphones,” in Radio Amateur News, May 1920, 612. Photographer unknown.

Part B

“Just after the Reichstag elections. View of Potsdamer Platz, assembled crowd listening to loudpeakers announcing the election results,” in Zeitbilder,no. 19, supplement of Vossische Zeitung Berlin, May 11, 1924, title page. Photograph by John Graudenz.

Part C

“Worker filling shrapnel grenades in the Spandau munitions factory,” in the Archive of the Spandau City History Museum, Berlin, 1917. Photographer unknown.

Part E

“During World War I, Spandau rifle factory workers at barrel-straightening machines for the production of Gewehr 98 bolt-action rifles,” date unknown. Photograph by Otto and Georg Haeckel, courtesy of Spandau City History Museum.

Part F

“Nevins working at the radio communications station atop the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City,” in the article “Jack and Anna, They Do Their Courting by Wireless, Leagues Away,” The Daily News, March 17, 1909, 3. Photographer unknown. “Graynella Packer Wireless Operator,” in Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Date and photographer unknown. “Violet McKenzie with wireless, circa 1922,” in Ex-Wrans Association NSW. Photographer unknown.

Visual Epilogue

“Dora Dery’s December 2nd chat with Victor Schwanneke on Berlin radio about ‘today’s woman’,” in Der Deutsche Rundfunk: Funk-Post, no. 49, Berlin, 1928. Photographer unknown.

“November 24, 1928: Radio broadcast from Vienna, recorded in Berlin with Fultograph reel to reel,” ibid. Caricaturist unknown.

This is a slightly modified version of the multimedia essay Ich spreche Funk, produced as a site-specific piece for the ZAK – Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin. The work, translated from German by Anita Di Bianco, was commissioned for ZAK’s exhibition “SKIN – Membrane, Organ, Archive,” 2023, curated by Katharina Koch (alpha nova & galerie futura) and Julie August (Frauenmuseum Berlin).

A Voice Exists in Voicing

Radiophonic Walks and Conversations

Anna Bromley

With drawn annotations by Michael Fesca

Afterword by Hedwig Fijen

The following texts are modified transcripts of A Voice Exists in Voicing, a ten-part radio piece commissioned by the Manifesta 14 Prishtina (July–October 2022) at the invitation of Catherine Nichols for the artistic program “it matters what worlds world worlds: how to tell stories otherwise.”

All conversations took place in English except for the last one with Qerkica Rexhepi, which was simultaneously translated by Donjetë Murati. For this printed version, the sound recording with Qerkica Rexhepi was translated by Plator Gashi.

In the prelude, almost all characters, including authors and researchers, are introduced by their first names. In the conversations, the full names of all persons recorded in the radiophonic walks and conversations are used at the point where their audio recordings are featured, unless they requested otherwise. The spelling of names throughout appears in the original language.

Radiophonic walk in Prishtina with Agnes Nokshiqi during pre-project research, July 29, 2022.

Radio Jingle

Sound of footsteps bounding down a few steps, opens into birds singing, footsteps continue on level ground.

Anna Bromley: A voice exists in voicing.

Qerkica Rexhepi: I was cold, I didn’t know where to go.

Vullnet Krasniqi: I ended up in my apartment.

Alisa Maliqi: I was very, um, strong.

Dardan Zhegrova: To kind of romanticize.

Sihana Klisurica: Uh, the oppression and, um…

Ambient, blended sonic textures slowing down.

Kaltrina Krasniqi: We’re going in circles now. Careful!

Arba Hatashi: So I have to warn you.

Kafu: I’m kind of mad a little bit.

Water splashing in fountain. Distant dog barking.

Then dog barking close by in a high pitch, stretches into an ascending glissando.

1

Prelude

[Bouncing from the eighties to right now and back again.]

Voices buzzing, relaxed laughing.

Lucid feminine voice chanting ahaaaaa.

Tone transitioning into a stammering, breathed chant.

Anna speaks in a narrator’s voice.

Anna Bromley: Shake the syntax! A tale of borrowed voices.