ReiseRadio$Radio's Trips


The term Europe even today after the end of the cold wars mostly means the western european countries. It means the unification by one currency, by norms for industrial goods, by legislative, military and economic treaties. Europe as a geographical term, as a name for a landscape with different people and their different languages, cultures and everydaylife living side by side tends to be overseen. As an effect the countries outside these treaties seem to vanish out of Europe; but as another effect, the regions inside this Europe are not getting known to each other: what's not one's everydaylife stays strange.

This regionality of the everyday-culture that is to be seen in the differences of breads, of gardenarchitectures, greetings and local stations shall not be diluted - because this regionality of the everyday-culture has a relation in the broadcasting map of Europe, it shall be investigated with the help of radio.

Radio normally means UHF-Radio. It's range varies with the energy used for transmission, with the position of the antenna and the number of relay stations used: but mostly this radio is local radio. Which makes sense: who in Hamburg shall be interested in Berlin's traffic jams, who in Vienna would listen to a northern german idiom programme, who in Kopenhagen could understand Zagrebs local news, who in Budapest likes the hits of the world wide charts to be announced in danish? - So suggestive the question, so questionable the suggested answer: what would it be like if for a moment, the distant foreign world would penetrate everyday life and would also be perceived as familiar - There are traffic jams in Berlin. In Nordfriesland, people talk as strange as in Kaernten. Zagreb's local life exists beyond topnews. The charts are similar everywhere.

We do not mean to wipe out the differences between different countries and stations: we mean to discover both a mundane and exciting local life with similarities as well as differences instead of the partly known foreign locals. ReiseRadio$Radio's Trips is less a try to make a multicultural medialisation between people in revealing their differences first and than transforming them into folklore. It's an attempt to make foreign everyday lives visibly and audibly known as similar to their own.

On the other hand ReiseRadio$Radio's Trips will not only connect the consumers of different stations with each other, but the producers as well - because of the few possibilities to broadcast, they often work isolated at this one station. ReiseRadio$Radio's Trips will try to mediate the different theories and technics of radiowork and will work by this as a media in the original sense, as a mobile workshop. The goal is to prepare conditions for further decentralized projects and to widen the broadcasting-times for art radio at free and state radio-stations.

Locality and Movement

Broadcasting traditionally takes place out of a solid and soundproof studio; it's not by chance that those broadcasting locations are named as 'stations'. Where the radio is aired is different from where it's received: bureaus, kitchens, cars and, sometimes in the evening the kids' rooms in the suburbs. The receiving of radio does not have too much to do with locality where you are. The necessary equipment is small and cheap and nearly as ubiquitous as the radiowaves themselves. This nearly natural separation between sending and receiving will be tested by ReiseRadio$Radio's Trips. The transmission car will have stops at highway-stations, bathes, farms and fastfood bars - not to produce another kind of authentic onsite-radio but to make the locations audible where radio is heard.

Our work will depend on the conditions of the different stations and the final equipment of the transmission-car. Ideal broadcasting time would be two hours per day. Half an hour would be used for a kind of a diary of the trip. How we deal with the rest of the time is to be discussed with the participants of the work and can be used separately by artists or in collaboration with each other. How the broadcasts are produced, live or preproduced, can vary as well as how the pieces are broadcasted. The trip will start in Zürich and visit Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Leipzig, Dresden, Linz, Vienna and will end in Graz.
Frankfurt/Zürich/Wien, August 97


Oliver Augst (Germany)
Gabriela Brühwiler (Switzerland)
Reto Friedmann (Switzerland)
Friedrich Tietjen (Austria)


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last revision: 29.07.98