Radio

"This varnished box shows nothing that protrudes, only a knob to
turn to the next click, so that quite soon many little aluminum
skyscrapers light up weakly within, while savage shoutings spurt
contending for our attention.

A little apparatus with a wonderful ‘selectivity’. Ah, how
ingenious it is to have refined the ear to this point. Why? To pour
into it incessantly the most outrageous vulgarities.

All the foment of dung of the world’s melody.

Ah well, that’s what’s best, after all. The dung must be brought
out and spread in the sun: such a flood sometimes fertilizes…

However, with a hurried step, return to the box, to sum up.

Held in high esteem in every house these last years—plonked
right in the middle of the parlour, all windows open—the buzzing,
beaming little second garbage bin!"¹
–Francis Ponge, The Radio

It starts with a click and a delay, between transmissions sent and one already decaying. Scores are broadcast into the city, taking on a life of their own. Blurring the dichotomy of inside and outside, the city becomes both receiver and transmitter, folding the broadcast back onto itself. Here, the signals do not settle but enter a circuit, being altered with each iteration. Wavelengths decorate surfaces, are being reflected and pass through solid objects—light bulbs inform us not only about their surroundings but also about the flow of power, while their exterior space is spotlit momentarily, hallucinating movement where there is spatial stagnation. Lime and chalk, retrace Manhattan’s street-grids, forming a mirrored city. The streetpainting as code of the surrounding area, repetition as an attempt to construct a second city.

Radio brings together the works of Hagen Eberle and Matthias Holznagel during the Goethe Institute’s yearend closing period. Situated in and around the exhibition space, Radio
comprises sculptural scores addressing the passerby.

Curated by New Cameron

Radio was made possible with the support of Goethe-Institut New York.



¹ Published in “Le parti pris des choses (The Choice of Things)”, 1942, translated by John Montague