Ethereal Connections – Poetics of Relation in Twentieth-Century Broadcasting

Dissertation project by Frederike Maas

The dissertation explores two experimental radio practices from twentieth-century Europe and their potential to foster new modes of connection. Building on Bini Adamczak’s concept of Beziehungsweisen as social ways of relating, it proposes a media-theoretical translation: connection as a relational, affective, and potentially utopian force within technical media.

Departing from the dominant media-aesthetic paradigm of radio as a one-way transmission— as summed up by the dictum “He speaks / you listen”—the project traces how, in two distinct moments, practitioners sought to subvert this asymmetry. In the Weimar Republic, state-affiliated stations in Frankfurt and Berlin experimented with pedagogical dialogue to reshape the listener's role. In 1970s Italy, the dadaist station Alice used phone-in formats to create many-to-many communication, dissolving the line between sender and receiver.

Sound and orality emerge here not only as tools of transmission but as poetic forms, capable of shaping collective imaginaries, voicing alternative subjectivities, and evoking fleeting moments of shared resonance. Through close readings of archival material and theoretical reflection, the dissertation reveals how these ephemeral media practices gesture toward alternative forms of mediation: participatory, affective, and utopic.