Radio dramas inside and outside the 'radio lab' and the ABC

Description

This presentation is focused on significant instances of interaction and/or influence connecting radio play cultures internationally to the Australian context – and vice versa. The ABC is also the only radio broadcasting organization in Australia to have sustained the production and dissemination of radio plays and related radio fiction output from its beginnings (1932) to the present, although 'radio plays' as we have traditionally identified them, are today a rare breed in Australian broadcasting, including on the ABC. Radio plays and performance work have performed a notable role however within the ABC over its 90-year history and contributed to the international development of radio's expressive forms and to Australian literary, 'performance' and art cultures in ways that are not well recognized today. There is also the re-entry of 'audio fiction' into the ABC via the current podcasting boom, although this is accompanied by a strange loss of memory both within and outside of the organization as to the ABC's past traditions of radio drama, play, radio art and audio 'feature' cultures. This loss (and indeed disconnect) has been accompanied by further amnesia of the ABC’s many past explorations, interrogations and experiments with form, art and aesthetics, particularly as these materialized in the ABC's various designated creative spaces devoted to crossing boundaries in drama, features, and the audio arts. It was also in these 'ateliers', workshops and 'radio labs' of the ABC – never to be named as such – that original radio plays and other performance and ‘feature’ works were produced, many exploring familiar formats and genres but others going well outside these limits to forge new forms and practices – and sometimes to reframe the questions. Here were crossings between genres, and reality and fiction, with all this 'play' expressive of that continuing adventure in sound opened through access to the radiophonic space, and which may now also be encountered one hopes in the expanding multiverse of podcasting.

Period	24 Sept 2022 → 25 Sept 2022
Event title	Symposium: This is Channel Earth : 100 years of Radio Drama International
Event type	Conference
Location	Regensburg, Germany, BavariaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International