From 1927 to 1933, Walter Benjamin hit the airwaves with radio broadcasts for the Berliner Funkstunde and the Süüdwestdeutscher Rundfunk. Many of these programs focused on the metropolis of Berlin, revisiting the city's glamorous and disputed areas. Here one hears some of Benjamin's most explicit commentary on the metropolitan environment. Reflecting on particular urban conditions, describing architectural works, and, most interestingly, calling on the listener to visit specific sites within the city, Benjamin's radio talks encouraged an active engagement with the city and its architecture. The new medium of the radio became in Benjamin's hands a vehicle to expose the everyday of the metropolis by making the listeners active participants in the material and spatial discoveries of the city in which they were living. During this time, radio was commonly used for either the dissemination of bourgeois culture or the broadcasting...
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June 2010
