Eran Schaerf. Frequency-Modulated Scenario

Eran Schaerf. FM-Scenario: Reality Race, ZKM | Media Museum, June 22 - August 25, 2013

ISBN: 978-3-943620-34-4

Editors: Herbert Kapfer und Joerg Franzbecker

Publisher: Archive Books, Berlin, 2015

Text: english, 288 p., ill.

What difference does it make if a newspaper reports on a worker protest as if it were a theater piece? Why does an argument in the neighbors' apartment sound like a radio play? When was the term Lebensraum decolonized? How can Little Red Riding Hood get hold of the copyright for her own character? Who dresses up as whom in order to belong to what group? What happens when not much is happening, but lots of airtime has been scheduled for news broadcasts?

At a radio station called The Listener's Voice, freedom of speech is supposed to be guaranteed by a computerized moderator taking listeners' calls. Yet, the moderator was not only programmed for an unplanned architecture of discourse that sprawls into environments of potential violence, ambiguous sexuality, and rowdy beauty, but also to make identifying data anonymous. Double-sided, invisible, and acoustic masks are at work. Cyber-radio comes into conflict with human memory.

With contributions by Heike Geissler, Herbert Kapfer, Christine Lemke, Hanne Loreck, Sven Lütticken, Karolin Meunier, Eva Meyer, Yigal Shalom Nizri, Gerald Raunig, Margit Rosen, Eran Schaerf, Andrea Thal, and Gitte Villesen