TALK and Discussion

Being initiated especially during the AsiaBerlin Summit 2022, with the planned India Salon we, at the gallery Under the Mango Tree intend to bring the German public closer to India of the 21st century. The INDIA SALON would bring engaging, professionals/ speakers whose talks, discussions and conversations expose contemporary ideas and ways of India that are supported by concrete evidence and are relevant to a broad international audience.

FRIDAY 25.11.2022 18:30 Hrs.

TALK AND DISCUSSION I Warm Wavelengths in the cold war.

Dr. Anandita Bajpai

Radio Berlin International began its journey as the German Democratic Republic’s foreign broadcasting station in 1959. Its Hindi Division, which started broadcasting in 1967, had several loyal listeners all across the Hindi-speaking belt in semi-urban and rural India. This talk will take audiences from locales in East Berlin where the station was based to those in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan, to the homesteads of avid listeners. Radio was one of the most popular means in the 70s – 80s India to insert oneself into world news. Tracing the mobile trajectories of souvenirs and gifts (from posters to pens, peak caps and pennants) sent by the radio station to Indian listeners, has also revealed that photographs were a crucial object of exchange among presenters in the GDR and listeners in India. From passport-sized profile photos, replicas of photos used for bureaucratic reasons, to elaborate studio photos, photos of exhibitions organized for radio stations in homesteads and family photos– listeners’ private collections provide an affective view into memorabilia and photographs as autobiographical objects. What do they tell us about the camera and its gaze in the 1970s-80s? How did these become material performers of love, recognition and solidarity? And how did they render ephemeral radio waves into a material everyday presence?

Mit freundlicher Unterstützung der
Regierenden Bürgermeisterin von Berlin.