Second Bauhaus.Listening Workshop #2 – Sagada/Manila »Listening to the World – 100 Years of Radio« Research Project Begins in the Philippines

From colonial radio infrastructure in Java to the role played by radio during the 2021 coup in Myanmar, to 100 years of radio in Philippines to the history of late-night radio programme in Vietnam - Southeast Asia has a variety of stories to tell about radio. The second Bauhaus.Listening Workshop will focus on, among other topics, the restitution of sound archives whose sound recordings are still mostly in Europe. How should this intangible cultural heritage be handled? How can and should it be returned? 

The spotlight will also be on different tuning systems. Determining the pitches of musical instruments works according to different sets of principles everywhere, but they all have transnational cultural histories. The musicians among the workshop participants will be bringing their instruments along and testing them in practical demonstrations.

The Bauhaus.Listening Workshop #2 Sagada/Manila will host diverse professional ›ears‹ of Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Sol Trinidad and Dayang Yraola, for example, will address the complexity of listening from an ethnomusicological perspective during their Listening Walk. Devana Senanayake will be discussing how to listen to queer Southeast Asian voices with the participants of the workshop.  Rani Jambak will examine radio history with her »Radio in the Independency 1945« presentation and Anjeline de Dios will explore listening through her sound massages. The evening programme is also jam-packed: For example, filmmaker and sound artist Riar Rizaldi will be presenting his film »Tellurian Drama« (2020) coping with over a century of radio history in Java.

The Bauhaus.Listening Workshop #2 leaves the metropolitan region of Manila and begins in the mountains of Sagada in the north of the Philippines. As the workshop comes to a close, the collaborative results will be presented to the public and broadcasted on the radio as part of the international »Listening Biennial« in Manila. 

The goal of the project is to create a space where participants with various backgrounds can share their experiences, challenges and tools in an organised, cooperative exchange. The question of who is responsible for the cultural technique of listening is central to the event as is the goal of developing new models for the future.

The results of the Workshop and research will be compiled on the new »Transcultural Listening Map« web platform. It will provide the source material for a new podcast series produced by Deutschlandfunk Kultur as well as for productions in the participating countries. At the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin two events are planned to mark the anniversary of »100 Years of Radio« in October 2023 and 2024 respectively, which are organized and carried out by the Goethe-Institut together with all partners. The events will showcase artistic and discursive perspectives of the project.

Bauhaus.Listening Workshop #2 - Sagada/Manila 

05-11 August 2024

Directed by Nathalie Singer
Co-Curated by meLê yamomo
Supported by the Goethe-Institut Philippinen and Frederike Moormann

Goethe-Institut Philippines
www.goethe.de/ins/ph/de/index.html

11 August | Public Presentation & Live Broadcast

Hosted by
PAROLA UP Fine Arts Gallery
& Listening Biennial

Broadcast
DZUP – UPD CMC Department of Broadcast Communication
Radyo Sagada

The »Listening to the World – 100 Years of Radio« project examines listening as a global phenomenon. Listening to the radio profoundly influences the way we live together; it connects individuals and creates identity. It can also be used, however, for propaganda purposes and as a tool of espionage and power. Radio has been a conduit of globalisation since its inception and played a key role in colonial history. Today, the internet has replaced radio as a medium of global communication, spawning new audio formats. Our listening habits are being reshaped. Every region of the world has its own histories of listening and listening away, of communities gathering around the radio and then separating again. Radio waves are not limited by national borders, meaning that these histories are interconnected in many other ways.

Nathalie Singer is Professor of Experimental Radio at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. She also works as a radio artist, producer and curator, and has composed for various media and published work on sound art. She was a dramaturge in Deutschlandradio Kultur’s radio drama department, where she developed new radio formats (»Wurfsendung«). Her artistic research is currently focussed on establishing radio art archives and artistic mediation (for example through the »Radiophonic Spaces« exhibition). She is currently working on the Bauhaus.Listening.Workshops and is especially interested in the cultural technique of listening and its potential for designing new environments.

meLê yamomo is Assistant Professor of New Dramaturgies, Media Cultures, Artistic Research, and Decoloniality at the University of Amsterdam. He is also the author of »Sounding Modernities« (2018). He is also the Project Coordinator of »Decolonizing Southeast Asian Archives« (DeCoSEAS, 2021-2024) and »Sonic Entanglements« (2017-2022). meLê was the winner of the 2022 Open Ear Composer’s Award and the 2020 KNAW Early Career Award. He is a member of the Amsterdam Young Academy and is a resident artist at the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse Theatre. He is the curator of the Decolonial Frequencies Festival and host and producer of the Sonic Entanglements podcast.

Frederike Moormann is a sound artist and artistic researcher. She completed a B.A. in Physics at the LMU in Munich and an M.A. in Philosophy and History at King’s College London / LMU Munich. Her research-based and site-specific sound work focusses on memory culture and spatial perception. She was co-curator of the »Anybody out there?! - 100 Years of Radio« exhibition and radio show in Leipzig, Germany. Her current artistic research focusses on telecommunication implementation. She is an artistic assistant at Experimental Radio.

Goethe-Institut Philippines has been a supporter and participant in the cultural scene of the Philippines through various activities in music, dance, theatre and film.