Listening to the World - 100 Years of Radio

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 »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.

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 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 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.

Download the official program booklet here:

Bauhaus.Listening. to the World Workshop

Anjeline de Dios (Philippines)
apè Aliermo (Canada)
Dayang Yraola (PAROLA UP Fine Arts Gallery, Philippines)
Devana Senanayake (Sri Lanka)
Elizabeth Enriquez (University of the Philippines)
Gwen Gaongen (Radyo Sagada, Philippines)
LaVerne David C. de la Peña (University of the Philippines)
Lynn Nandar Htoo (Myanmar)
Rani Jambak (Rumah Gagas, Indonesia)
Riar Rizaldi (Indonesia)
Rosemainy Buang (Singapore)
Patrick Tirano (Philippines)
Sol Maris Trinidad (University of the Philippines)
Truong Que Chi (Nha San Collective, Vietnam)
Victoria Yam (Malaysia)