In the pre-programming-format age, there was nothing unusual about broadcasting productions and events that went on for hours: nobody minded if time slots were exceeded or the news skipped on occasion. It was thus possible for Hans Otte to present experimental art and radio art in a medium that was open to them, and the question never arose as to whether the sounds he was broadcasting were “radiophonic” or not. Often nobody even knew for sure beforehand what would be heard, for example when John Cage and David Tudor simultaneously performed their pieces Rainforest and mureau II in Bremen’s “Glocke” concert hall (1972), when Wolf Vostell extended an invitation to attend his electronic happening Umgraben on a field in Worpswede across which wires had been stretched, then requesting that the audience dig up the soil and generate sounds with their shovels (1974), when Karlheinz Stockhausen had stems and branches cracked in two on stage for his Herbstmusik, when Max Neuhaus asked the visitors to his electronic installation Underwater Music in the Bremen Zentralbad (public swimming pool) literally to go under water to listen (1976), or when, for her work Ice Music for Bremen, a naked Charlotte Moorman played a cello made of pink ice, recording the sound made by the water dripping from it as it melted (1978). In all of these cases, the acoustic results were hardly predictable; i.e. could only be vaguely imagined. For that very reason, they took place on radio. And this is also a kind of radio art.

The Research Centre for Artists’ Publications will place this special intermedia approach in the limelight of the exhibition, thus providing an overview of one of the most interesting radio festivals in history. The exhibition is being carried out in cooperation with Radio Bremen.