20 Jun 2013

FM-Scenario - The Listener´s Voice at ZKM Karlsruhe

The inter-media project 'FM-Scenario - The Listener´s Voice' uses the Internet as a production site for generating content for further media – more specifically: radio stations, exhibitions and publications. The project's starting point comprises Eran Schaerf's news radio plays from the years 1997 to 2011, as well as new texts. The Listener's Voice (2002), a fictitious radio station, moderated by a computer program is exemplary of Eran Schaerf's news radio plays. Here, Schaerf uses the newscast format in order to indicate the relativity of its objectivity claim: newscasts not only describe apparent facts, but allow such coverage to be one narrative account among many.

On the Website www.fm-scenario.net, Eran Schaerf set up an expanding archive of audio modules. This online studio is not an information website, but a production site open to all. From this archive of audio modules ZKM curator, Margit Rosen, compiled the narrative 'FM-Scenario: Reality Race': a listener logs him or herself into the program 'The Listener's Voice', yet hesitates with the required registration of gender. As in state regulations, the machine compels the listener to identify him or herself as an individual by way of gender – as a necessary basis for all further communication. Were the moderator not a computer program, it would, perhaps, understand that gender is not clearly defined, but is constructed in the enactment of roles.

This montage serves Eran Schaerf as a script for a performance, which takes place in the exhibition space in front of cameras, though not before an audience. The imagery thus produced, is one of several elements of the three scenic installations featured in the exhibition.

Margit Rosen's audio-montage will be broadcast on June 21, 2013 at around 9.03 p.m. by the Bavarian Broadcasting Cooperation (Bayerischer Rundfunk) on Bayern2 as part of the program 'hör!spiel!art.mix'. After the broadcast, the program will be available as podcast for downloading on www.hoerspielpool.de, where previous montages, as well as the background broadcasts can already be found.

Project Curator: Joerg Franzbecker
Project Management: Herbert Kapfer and Joerg Franzbecker
Exhibition Curator: Margit Rosen
Project Coordination ZKM: Annina Zwettler
Performance and Image Production: in collaboration with Moritz Büchner, Joerg Franzbecker, René Haustein, Kerstin Honeit, Sabine Huzikiewiz, Gesche Karnick, Suchan Kinoshita, Inga Krüger, Karolin Meunier, Clara Napp, Paula Reissig, Martin Roos und Andrea Thal.

The project is funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).

'FM-Scenario – The Listener's Voice' (2012–2014) is a production of a production e.V., Berlin and Bayerischer Rundfunk/Hörspiel und Medienkunst in cooperation with Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Les Complices, Zurich; Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, and the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.