“Listening to the Universe – Radiophonien des Alls“  

A radio art festival by Datscha Radio

Every year in August, the Northern Hemisphere’s night sky is graced by meteor showers – the Perseids. Datscha Radio is using this astronomical spectacle as the departure point for a 48-hour festival of radio art, from moonset at 2:04 pm on August 11, until 2 pm on August 13, 2020. 

We invited the artists Jasmina Al-Qaisi & Helena Otto, Kata Kovacs & Tom O’Dogherty, Elo Masing and Marta Zapparoli into the garden. Ally Bisshop, Cedrik Fermont, Christian Kesseler, Nin Kuna, Rosanna Lovell, Leonie Roessler, Jodi Rose, Cobi van Tonder and Salomé Voegelin have also announced themselves for short interventions, DJ sets and readings. The program will be enriched by expected guest streams from Archipel Stations / Berlin and Marold Langer-Philippsen / Bratislava.

“Listening to the Universe – Radiophonien des Alls“ is dedicated to themes and music inspired by the phenomenon of the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Every year, around August 12, as the Earth draws close to the comet’s orbit, fragments of the comet fall into the Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds and light up in the form of shooting stars.

With a broad spectrum of topics – from cosmogonical myths to the signals of meteor detectors, from starlight-inspired violin improvisations to experimental horoscopes – Datscha Radio hopes to trace the path of these ‘falling stars’ to their manifestations in space and matter as the fictions and artistic responses that are bound up with them. 

When: 2:04 pm, August 11 until 2 pm, August 13, 2020,

Where: On FM 88.4 in Berlin and 90.7 in Potsdam, over mini FM on location and on the Internet via datscharadio.de and fr-bb.org. 

The following radio stations will be transmitting Datscha Radio’s programme: Soundart Radio (Devon/UK), Radio Lora (Zurich/CH), Radio free FM (Ulm), Radio Blau (Leipzig), Radio Helsinki (Graz/Aut), Freies Radio Neumünster, Archipel Stations (Berlin).  

“Listening to the Universe – Radiophonien des Alls“ has been imagined and organised by Gabi Schaffner, Kate Donovan, Niki Matita and Helen Thein.  

Funded by the Amt für Weiterbildung und Kultur, Berlin Pankow, Musikfonds e.V. by means of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM), and the Hans und Charlotte Krull Foundation. 

This post is also available in: German