Gastvortrag Dr. David Hendy (Univ. of Westminster): Radio, the Intellect and the Imagination in the Early Twentieth Century Britain

Veranstalter: Lehrstuhl für Britische Kultur / Centre for British Studies / Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft

This talk is motivated by a desire to understand the broad contribution to twentieth-century cultural and aesthetic life of a mass medium such as radio. It opens up the subject by looking at the dramati-cally different careers and social lives of three pioneering producers at the BBC: Lance Sieveking, Cecil Lewis, and Hilda Matheson. All were involved in the First World War - two as pilots, one as a spy; all, too, were deeply involved in the artistic, literary, and political networks of the 1920s and 1930s. But their beliefs and attitudes to broadcasting were all very different. Sieveking was fascinated by the new technologies of the Machine Age, interested in German expressionist cinema, and wanted to invent a means of 'painting with sound'; Lewis believed in broadcasting as a tool of international peace-keeping and understanding; Matheson wanted the BBC to be fully engaged in the sound and fury of domestic political debates. In exploring their competing visions for the BBC, I try to suggest that the history of broadcasting in Britain needs to abandon the deeply entrenched idea of it being the monolithic and single-handed creation of one man - John Reith - and needs to move away from its traditional focus on media-specific narratives. It needs to explore the wider social and intellectual net-works of its key staff, and it needs the birth of radio to be re-imagined 'synaesthetically', as being deeply enmeshed in the broader culture - the ethical beliefs, the aesthetics, the politics - that emerged in the years immediately after the War.

Kontakt:

Jansohn, Christa

Der Termin wird im Veranstaltungskalender angezeigt.