Frederike Maas
This dissertation explores two broadcasting experiments from 20th-century Europe in terms of their potential to create connection. Drawing on a concept by Bini Adamczak, it focuses on the Beziehungsweisen (modes of relation) that these media practices aimed to establish between producers and listeners. The starting point is the media-aesthetic view of radio as a one-way, unilateral broadcast, or, as the publicist Karl Würzburger put it in his time: »He speaks/you listen.« In both periods examined, groups of radio practitioners sought to challenge this asymmetrical form of communication, pushing against the normative idea of broadcasting and broadening the medium’s definition. However, their approaches differed: While state-controlled radio stations in Frankfurt and Berlin sought to establish a dialogical yet educational relationship with listeners during the Weimar Republic, the Italian pirate radio station ALICE experimented with the phone-in technique in the 1970s to foster a kind of many-to-many communication that abolishes the differentiation between producer and listener. The dissertation investigates these aspects using primary source material and connects the practices in question to a broader philosophical discourse on the ability of technical media to establish connections and create communities.