A Radio Ballet is a radio play produced for the collective reception in certain public places. It gives the dispersed radio listeners the opportunity, to subvert the regulations of the space. 

The Radio Ballet “Übung in nichtbestimmungsgemäßem Verweilen” took place in the main station of Leipzig, Germany, a former public space that is under private control of the German railway company (Deutsche Bahn - DB) and it ́s associates since the mid-nineties. Like every bigger train station in Germany it is controlled by a panoptic regime of surveillance cameras, security guards and an architecture, that avoids any dark and “dangerious” corners. The system of control is designed to keep out every kind of deviant behaviour. People, who sit down on the floor or start to beg are detected immediately and instantly expelled.

The Radio Ballet brought back these excluded gestures of deviant behavior into the main station. Around 500 participants - usual radio listeners, no dancers or actors – were invited to enter the station, equipped with cheap, portable radios and earphones. By means of these devices they could listen to a radio program consisting of a choreography suggesting permitted and forbidden gestures (to beg, to sit or lie down on the floor etc.). These suggestions were inter-rupted by reflections on the public space and on the Radio ballet itself. 

The Radio Ballet was not a demonstration (that could have been forbidden by the DB) but a ”Zerstreuung” (a german term with different meanings: dispersion, distraction, distribution and, as well: entertainment). It also was not a mass ornament: The participants could act where they wanted to, on the platforms, on the stairs or the escalators or in the ”Promenade” (the shopping mall in the station). They acted as a free association, which transformed the coincidental constellation of radio reception into a political intervention. 

The first Radio Ballet took place in May 2002 in the main station in Hamburg. In both cases – Hamburg and Leipzig – the German Railway company tried to forbid the intervention before it took place. In Hamburg they even brought it before court - where we won: The court followed our argumentation, that the Ballet is not a gathering, that is forbidden by the regulations of the space, but a dispersion of radio listeners, that cannot be forbidden anywhere.

LIGNA

LIGNA consists of the media- and performance artists Ole Frahm, Michael Hüners and Torsten Michaelsen. Since 2002 their work devotes itself to creating temporary situations, that employ their audience as a collective of producers – an association that can produce unforseeable, uncontrollable effects which challenge the regulation of a space. One of LIGNA´s models of media usage, the RadioBallet (invented in 2002), provides radio listeners with a choreography of excluded and forbidden gestures in formerly public, now controlled spaces like train stations or shopping malls. Others like The new Man (2008) or Oedipus (2011) question the space of theatre itself as an apparatus that shapes subjectivity.  More recent works like Secret Radio (2014) or The Great Refusal invite the participants to stage a complex interaction in public space or on stage, which discloses itself to them only gradually. In 2017 LIGNA received the George Tabori prize, the most important award in the german free theatre scene. 

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Radio, as a heterogeneous mix of technological progress and aestheticised desire, goes far beyond being merely a medium of communication. This series of podcasts aims to highlight this fact, offering a selection within the wide variety of topics currently being explored, most notably the confluences and limits and the possibilities of dissemination and the presence of silenced histories.

Depending on the chosen historical and theoretical paradigm, multiple and even contradictory histories of radiophony can be constructed. Therefore, research starts from a general corpus of concepts which explore, along with a fascination with the medium, a utopian and unconventional treatment: the "Radio-Eye" and the Radio-Pravda manifesto of Dziga Vertov; the public interaction and communication of Bertolt Brecht; William Burroughs' cut-ups and communicative disruption; Velimir Khlebnikov's "The Radio of the Future"; and the concept "Radio Mind" by psychologist Upton Sinclair. As media theorist Allen S. Weiss states: “Radio is not a singular entity but rather a multitude of radios” and "radiophonia is a heterogeneous field encompassing diverse apparatus, practices, forms, and utopias”.

Opposite the canonisation of the field and radiophonic methods, there are people and collectives that opt to keep margins fluid and encourage participation, reflection and interaction through experimental approaches and applications. To invent and reinvent radio is to approach radiophonic space as a creative space. Thus, the series seeks to establish an open and fragmented dialogue with media artists, creators and thinkers on the relationship between radio, society, technology and experimentation through singular and idiosyncratic radio pieces.

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Código copiado al portapapeles.
Date:
09/07/2025
Production:
Agnès Pe
License:
Creative Commons by-nc-nd 4.0

Audio quotes

  • LIGNA. Radio Ballet. Exercise in lingering not according to the rules (Übung in nichtbestimmungsgemäßem Verweilen). Leipzig, Germany (2003). Available online
  • LIGNA. Kracauer's Hotel Hallen (First broadcast 04.07.2014), on SFK (Freies Sender Kombinat). Available online
  • LIGNA. Musik Box, on SFK (Freies Sender Kombinat), Hamburg
  • LIGNA. Dial the signals! Radio Concert for 144 Mobile Phones. Kunsthalle Hamburg (26–27 April 2003)
  • Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith. Der Ozeanflug. In Lehrstücke by Bertolt Brecht (1930)
  • LIGNA. Lehrstück Lindberghflug. A production by LIGNA and Kampnagel (2023). Funded by the concept funding of the Hamburg Cultural Authority
  • Pierrot Desperes. Kal-Haven Trail, Grand Junction, Michigan, USA: GingerMan Raceway. Radio Aporee (2014). Available online
  • Raul. Parco del Roccolo, Parabiago, Il Roccolo. Radio Aporee (2003). Available online
  • Harald Finster. Hawes Auction Mart. Radio Aporee (2010). Available online
  • Tsan-Cheng Wu. Luoshan, Fuli Township, Hualien County: Early Morning. Radio Aporee (2022). Available online
  • kellershohn. Typical German Train: Annoying Catering Announcement. Radio Aporee (2010). Available online