Demon Radio
Hilmteichstraße 113
8043 Graz
Up in the hills of Graz, in an otherwise posh neighborhood of villas and university research institutes, lies a derelict call center of a mobile phone provider. Its grid-based modernist architecture and prominent radio tower make it look like a mixture between a listening post operated by a vigilant and secret state service and a broadcasting center or transmission point. We imagine it as the premises of Demon Radio, haunted by one of our characters, the ominous and charismatic Dr. Jazz.
Dr. Jazz, otherwise known as Dietrich Schulz-Köhn (1912–1999), was West German radio’s main jazz expert in the postwar period. He had been a Nazi student activist, but was also a passionate fan and collector of hot jazz and swing, which the party banned after its ascent to power. Without ever challenging other Nazi policies, he continued to champion the prohibited music. In occupied France, he used his position as a Luftwaffe ground officer to socialize with some of the greats of the music scene—some of them Roma, some Black, and some members of the Resistance. After the war, he was able to leverage these and other contacts.
Departing from his story, the key theme of the works assembled here is mixed messages and their transmission—how liberating practices and messages could easily turn into their contrary in the larger frame of repressive politics. Other works further probe the idea of demon possession as it reappears in our time of unbridled military extractivism.
Filed under “Demon Radio”
Zuleikha Chaudhari
Rehearsing Azaad Hind Radio (2018)
steirischer herbst ’23
Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys
Micro Mundo 3, 4, 5, 8, and 10 (2023)
Die Vier von der Tankstelle (The Four from the Filling Station, 2023)
steirischer herbst ’23
Anna Engelhardt and Mark Cinkevich
Onset (2023)
steirischer herbst ’23
Dani Gal
Book of the Machines (2023)
Dark Continent (2023)
steirischer herbst ’23
Anton Kats
The Cemetery of Melodies Alive (2023)
steirischer herbst ’23
Michael Stevenson
Serene Velocity in Practice: MC510 Signs & Wonders (Prerequisite for CS183 How to Build the Future) (2017–23)
steirischer herbst ’23
Markus Sworcik and René Stiegler
Gedunkelfloxx Obsidian (2023)
steirischer herbst ’23
Retrospective
Retrospective