Archiv für die Kategorie „Material zu den bisherigen Hörspielsymposien“
Erster Band der Rendsburger Schriften erschienen: »Hörspiel ist schön!«
Am 26. Februar 2009 erschien der erste Band der neuen Reihe „Rendsburger Schriften“. In dieser Schriftenreihe wird das Nordkolleg Rendsburg, Akademie für kulturelle Bildung, zukünftig in loser Folge Ergebnisse von Tagungen, Workshops, Seminaren und Projekten präsentieren.
Im nun erschienenen Band mit dem Titel „Hörspiel ist schön!“ sind zwölf Vorträge aus den ersten sechs Jahren des „Hörspielsymposions an der Eider“ dokumentiert, die sich mit der Geschichte des Mediums „Hörspiel“ beschäftigen, mit den technischen Bedingungen und Möglichkeiten sowie den verschiedenen Ästhetiken, Erzählstrategien und Realitätskonstruktionen in Hörspiel, Feature und Radiokunst zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts.
Das „Hörspielsymposion an der Eider“ am Nordkolleg Rendsburg hat sich seit dem Jahr 2002 zu einer Veranstaltung entwickelt, bei der Hörspiel- und Feature-Autoren, Rundfunk-Redakteure und – Dramaturgen, Soundartisten und Radiokünstler sowie Wissenschaftler und alle an radiophoner Kunst Interessierte ein Forum für Austausch und Diskussion gefunden haben.
Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Sammelbandes stammen von Ulrich Bassenge, Sabine Breitsameter, Frieder Butzmann, Thomas Gerwin, Andreas Hagelüken, Hannah Hofmann & Sven Lindholm, Jens Jarisch, Karl Karst, Birgit Kempker, Michael Lissek, Hilke Veth und Hans-Ulrich Wagner.
Auf der Internetseite www.hoerspielsymposion.info finden sich weitere multimediale Inhalte, die als Anhang zum Sammelband fungieren.
Diese Publikation entstand mit freundlicher Unterstützung der Medienstiftung Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein.
 (c) by Agnieszka Selig |
Copyright an den Tonaufnahmen: Jens Jarisch (zusätzlich bei »Heidi Hoh«: René Pollesch) |
Radiotechnology and Visual Art
Katja Kwastek in Conversation with Sabine Breitsameter
“Artists always were fascinated by new developments in technology and society. The have been reflecting political and perceptual changes ever since. Just think of the foreshortening technique at the beginning of modern times, which was closely related to contemporary scientific discoveries. Similarly, around the turn from the 19th to 20th century, the new means of transport and communication, railways, aircrafts, and radio technology have changed the world, because they opened up a new understanding of space and time.“
Sabine Breitsameter:
Radio waves are invisible, and therefore it might seem irritating, that visual artists at the beginning of the 20th century had started to deal with wireless technologies. Katja Kwastek, why exactly were artists at this time so interested in this technology?
Katja Kwastek:
Artists always were fascinated by new developments in technology and society, and have been reflecting this ever since in their works. They have been reflecting political and perceptual changes. Just think of the foreshortening technique at the beginning of modern times, which was closely related to contemporary scientific discoveries. Similarly, around the turn from the 19th to 20th century, the new possibilities of speed, means of transport, railways, aircrafts, and radio technology have changed the world, because they opened up a new understanding of space and time as well as new spaces: the space of communication, of information, outer space. Suddenly, space did not end at the horizon, but long distances could be bridged through the “ether”. Therefore, you can date the beginning of the artistic interest in wireless technologies to the beginning or the 20th century.
Sabine Breitsameter:
Which art movements where especially interested in that?
Katja Kwastek:
The Italian Futurists, the Russian Constructivists, and in France especially Robert Delaunay had been reflecting these technologies. In the beginning they simply transferred them into classic media, tried to adjust their painting to the new velocity and the new communication spaces and tried to depict them. Especially the Russian Constructivists have used this technology also as an artistic medium. E.g. Wladimir Tatlin did that in 1919/1920 with his “Monument for the Third International”, which really wanted to crown a state monument by wireless technology.
Sabine Breitsameter:
How did this monument look like and what was its purpose?
Katja Kwastek:
Tatlin had made a sketch and built a model for a monument, which was supposed to be higher than 400 meters. It was important, that it was higher than the Parisian Eiffeltower, who at Tatlin’s time had been state of the art of a technological monument. – Tatlin’s monument was designed to serve the officials of the Third International as a meeting place. It contained revolving rooms, moving and clustered cubicals. And the top of the monument, a kind of futuristic spiral, looked a bit disbalanced, however its static calculation had been done carefully. In fact, it was a press station with a wireless connection, which was also supposed to transmit images. At this time, this was pure utopia. Tatlins monument had never been built, it exists only as a sketch and a built model.
Sabine Breitsameter:
At the same time the French artist Robert Delaunay has explored visually the Parisian Eiffeltower, which was used in Paris as a radio tower. What was Delaunay’s intention?
Katja Kwastek:
Delaunay is an example for an artist, who explored these new technologies stylistically. With his paintings of the Eiffeltower he remained within the style of classical oil painting. He depicted the Eiffeltower as a monument of a new world, which radiates strongly colored rays. There are sketches, in which the painting’s subtitle is “La tour à l’univers s’addresse” – and this visionary idea was very important for him.
The Eiffeltower had been in use as a radio station at that time, and it was important for Delaunay, to show it as a monument of modernism and a new perception of the world.
Delaunay was one of the few who was aware of this building’s aesthetic. He was fascinated by its steel construction and its geometrical forms, and he tried to express this through his paintings.
Kasimir Malewitsch went even further. He tried to show a new perception of the world, in becoming completely abstract, and to depict the invisible space. – But how to depict something invisible? In principle, his famous “Black Square” is something like a black hole or a representation of infinity or the infinite universe. You can project into this painting quite a lot and his “Black Square” has an enormous depth. Its black surface tries to symbolize the data space. The latter is not a retroactive interpretation, but there are a number of statements by Malewitsch, in which he emphasized, that this was his aim in fact.
Sabine Breitsameter:
Are there also artists, who have completely turned away from visual representation, when they became inspired by radio and electromagnetic waves?
Katja Kwastek:
Especially interesting are artists, which have taken on wireless technologies not only as motives, but also as communication space using electromagnetic waves as material. – Very important in this respect is Marinetti, and especially the Italian Futurists’ radio manifesto. In fact, they looked radio upon as a new material for artists, also for visual artists. They considered the ether as a space which remains to be designed artistically by sounds.
A big problem was, that especially the Italian Futurists had been glorifying war. Their works, however, are interesting, although their subtext is not acceptable.
Sabine Breitsameter:
How was wireless technologies explored during the second half of the 20th century by visual artists?
Katja Kwastek:
The next important step in this “art of communication” was taking place during the Sixties. Artists started to materialize the visionary ideas of the futurists. Communication became a material of their art.
Especially important is Nam June Paik, who imagined already at the beginnings of the Sixties satellite conferences, and who suggested: ‘It would be great if not only sound could be transmitted between the continents, but also visuals. One could for example perform a piano concert: One plays the left hand, another plays the right hand.’
Projects like this were not yet realized at this time. The first satellite projects were performed at the beginning of the Seventies. Very famous is e.g. the Documenta opening in 1977 with satellite performances by artists.
When computer networks came up and the possibility of video recording, the radio and data transmission technology itself became an artistic medium. In early network projects by Robert Adrian in the Eighties, already the new globalization was the predominant topic. In his work “The World within 24 hours”, he had been positioning artists and artist groups around the globe, who communicated by fax at a certain hour. This was a very important global art work, which took the communicational possibilities as its medium.
Sabine Breitsameter:
Katja Kwastek, thank you for your interview.
Katja Kwastek, * 1970, has been an assistant professor since 2001 at the Institute for Art History/Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. Her special focus is on media art, with a special interest in digital media as instrument and object of art. Among other projects she has been coordinating an e-learning project, titled “Schule des Sehens” – “School of Visual Perception”. – Her dissertation deals with aspects of the Italian Renaissance.
Publications
“Global Games and Mobile Feelings. Interactivity between Expectation and Fulfilment“ in: Transmitter, Hermann Noehring (ed.), Osnabrück 2004.
Visualising Art History, 10th Computers and the History of Art Conference, London 2003.
Computer, Kunst und Kunstgeschichte (together with Hubertus Kohle), Köln 2003.
Bez-Künstler: Herstellung? – Inventarisierung als Kunst“ in: Nana Petzet, Nürnberg 2003.
“Interaktive Erinnerungsräume: LambdaMOOs und Lernen im CAVE als Erben des Simonides?”, in: zeitenblicke 2 (2003), Nr. 1 [08.05.2003], http://www.zeitenblicke.historicum.net/2003/01/kwastek/index.html (20.04.2004).
Camera. Gemalter und realer Raum der italienischen Frührenaissance“, Weimar 2001.
In preparation: The catalogue of the exhibition in Cuxhaven (April-May 2004): Ohne Schnur – Kunst und drahtlose Komunikation.
Links
- http://www.ohne-schnur.de
- http://www.schule-des-sehens.de
- http://www.zeitenblicke.historicum.net/2003/01/
- http://www.fak09.uni-muenchen.de/Kunstgeschichte/projekte/Paragone/
- http://www.kabonline.de/Kunst-und-Wissen/Computer.htm
- http://www.fak09.uni-muenchen.de/Kunstgeschichte/dozenten/kwastek/index.html