Did you expect as many participants as you got?
Absolutely not. Everyone in Leipzig told us beforehand that we shouldn’t be disappointed if less than hundred people participated. No one believed that there would be more people than in Hamburg where 300 people came along. In the end about 500 people came.

It seems to me that what makes this project so fun is that by listening to instructions and watching everyone else participation, an individual can feel less alone in his actions. That is, it was really easy to do these actions in the group.
This is one of the effects we wanted to achieve: to turn the coincidental constellation of radio listeners in a political collective, an association, that is able to make something, that a single person is not able to do – as he or she would get thrown out instantly.

Do you think the piece was politically effective?
In every political articulation it is hard to say what is effective in a strong sense. When is a demonstration effective? The radioballett was effective if you consider that in private public places like the main station no political statements are allowed. The radioballett showed that political interventions are possible when you subverts the rules of these places by dissemination.

Are there upcoming projects?
For us the radioballett is one model for a kind of a media usage of the radio not as a means of conveying messages, but as a way of dissemination, such as interventions in controlled spaces. So we will continue trying out how radio can change spaces ruled by exclusions. In this regard center cities are of special interest because they are the next places, after train stations, that are changed. Since Leipzig is trying to get the Olympics in 2012 and a lot of gentrification is at stake we are discussing to do another project there.

  

 

 
   
  Why do you find this type of protest effective?
When we say that we regard the radioballett as a model, we do not mean that it is the only way to express disagreement with a certain situation.

In Leipzig a participant criticized us, saying that the radioballett was unsuccessful since it didn’t harm the regime of control. He feared that the radioballett might become a substitute for other forms of protest that seem to be more radical. Or, to put it in another way: he missed the radical resistance (for him this would have been smashing the shop windows in the main station). We are sure that these militant practices can be very effective too, but this isn’t the point of the radioballett. Its effectiveness is its uncanniness.

You say that you want to “haunt a space” rather than “change people”. What does this mean, and how does it work?
The leftwing notion of “changing the conscious of people” seems strange to us. What practices are activists changing if they try to change consciousness? And what effect do they believe it will have? Do they hope that people behave differently and engage in political groups after they went through the process of consciousness-changing? What we wanted to examine was how radio reception itself can be a political act if it happens in an association. The radioballett showed that this association itself can have effects. Changing consciousness is a waste of time, if you don’t give models for associations that can effect political changes. There is an important philosophical difference: do you believe in false consciousness as the traditional Marxism does - or not. We think that “haunting a space” is a material practice with material effects.

Are dispersed protests part of a new trend of activism?
They are one possibility now. If the network of control is getting tighter every day, you have to find new ways. In Hamburg for example the association of shop owners in the inner city wants to enlarge the banning zone around the town hall. By this they want to get rid of demonstrations in the inner city that spoil their business. If they use means like that to keep common protest methods out, you have to look for new ways. What might fit into the new trend of activism is that the dispersed protest are usually big fun for their participants.

 But the general argument for banning certain behaviors in public space is that by not allowing certain behaviors (smoking, shouting) or even more radical ones (violence), they are preventing and protecting people from getting hurt. How would you respond?
No one gets hurt from other people who are lying around where they are not supposed to be or from people begging. The problem is that we grow used to associating crime with disorder. This means that people are not allowed to be at a certain places just because of the paranoid ideas of shop-owners and others following common perceptions. Violence is certainly another subject, but the "crimes" that people who are thrown out of the privatized space commit are usually not violent - they are only treated as if they were. Why don’t they have the right to be there - only because other people practice every day to see criminals in them? I don’t know about the situation in the US, but in Germany it is much more likely to become victim of a crime in private space than in public.

By the way: controlled space creates new victims: who knows how people discovered doing forbidden things like lying around are treated? Who will believe them if they are maltreated? In Hamburg the police are notorious for their racist attacks on people suspected of drug dealing. More controlled space means more space and more people under control of guards and policemen that might harm them.

I understand how it is law-making to establish rules of conduct, but how is that privatization? do these laws have to do with capitalism and economy? And if so, to what extent?
You always have to take in account that laws are made to sustain the present order of society, which is a capitalist one. I mentioned above the example of the banning zone around the town hall in Hamburg: the politicians are asked (and forced) to make laws in favor of the shop owner association. The shop owner association knows that they represent what is regarded as a common goal: to keep the economy running. Which promises to bring many badly paid jobs no one can live off of for everybody. It’s the specific historical situation of capitalism these days that makes steps like these look reasonable. In this situation it seems reasonable to submit every space to capitalist appropriation, to insure that behavior that might spoil this appropriation is banned or restricted to other zones. This certainly does not mean that public space once was a paradise not submitted to rules. But it changes corresponding to the changes capitalism is going through.

  
     
Germany wants to become the world power with a human face.
   
photo copyright: eiko grimberg