20 August 2024
15th Berlin Audio Play Festival
Live acts, competitions, discussions, exhibition
13–15 September 2024, Hanseatenweg
From 13 to 15 September 2024 the Berlin Audio Play Festival (BHF) will celebrate the centenary of the audio play with two new productions of Hans Flesch’s radio grotesquerie Zauberei auf dem Sender (Magic on the Air) along with performances, concerts, workshops, discussions and an exhibition.
Radiologie – Entzauberung auf dem Sender (Radiology – Demystification on the Air) by award-winning audio playwright Andreas Ammer and the electronic duo Driftmachine feat. Rumpeln is a response to Flesch’s Zauberei, which was produced 100 years ago. For their FLESCHback project Stella Luncke, Melina von Gagern and Barbara Meerkötter confronted unsuspecting passers-by with audio plays and captured their reactions. You can also experience live the “enchantment” of analogue magic in Michael Vorfeld’s Glühlampenkonzert and discover its “animistic” potential in Natascha Gangl & Rdeča Raketa’s Wendy Pferd Tod Mexiko (Wendy Horse Death Mexico) sound comic. In Carina Pesch’s performative sound installation BLINDer, you can experience how it feels to be exposed to an unfamiliar place without being able to see, and the exhibition Meine neue Syntax ist der Schnitt (My New Syntax Is the Cut) presents the work of Paul Wühr and Paul Pörtner, pioneers of original tone audio plays.
In the festival’s adjunct programme, Rosa von Praunheim uses excerpts from films and audio plays to explain the interrelationship between the two art forms. Praunheim has had a connection with audio plays since his Adonis in New York, and his play Die Nachtigall oder der grausame Sohn (The Nightingale or the Cruel Son) has been selected for the ARD-Audiothek’s audio play collection “100 aus 100” (100 out of 100).
The festival centres on the contests for the coveted “burning mics”, with the prizes consisting of high-quality audio equipment. The works nominated in the festival include all types of acoustic storytelling, from genre pieces to examples of sound art and documentary audio plays – allocated to the competitions on the basis of their length. The winner in the “Long Burning Mic” competition (pieces up to 60 minutes in length) will be selected by a jury of experts, including actress Bibiana Beglau. The winners of the “Short Burning Mic” (up to 20 minutes) and “Glowing Button Mic” (up to 5 minutes) competitions will be chosen by the audience at the festival and online. There will also be a “MicroSpeedster” (MikroFlitzer) award for plays lasting up to 60 seconds. Announced at short notice, these pieces must have been produced within the space of 14 days and need to include the sentence “I can’t switch off” and the sound of the creation of a new moment.
A century ago, radio was the first electronic mass medium to emerge an art form that remains very popular even in the digital era. The question of whether “100 years of audio drama are enough” will be discussed on Saturday, 14 September, by a panel of media policy experts who will not only look back at the past but will also consider a present and future in which public radio is increasingly abandoning audio plays in favour of formats designed to suit a mainstream audience.
The Berlin Audio Play Festival is committed to including blind people and those with visual impairments, offering workshops in which they can discover the acoustic arts for themselves. Childcare is provided.
The BHF is a cooperation with the Film and Media Arts Section at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and is funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.
Event details
15th Berlin Audio Play Festival
13–15 September 2024, admission: €12/8
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
www.adk.de
Live stream and further information:
www.berliner-hoerspielfestival.de, broadcast via digital radio (DABplus) on Deutschlandfunk Kultur’s “Dokumente und Debatten”
Press contact
Annette Schäfer, PR network, presse@pr-netzwerk.net, tel. 030-61 65 1155