From Sound Workshop to Radio Film: Tracing Serbian Radio Art History Backwards

Đorđe Malavrazić

doi:10.51191/issn.2637-1898.2025.8.15.41

Authors

Đorđe Malavrazić Radio Belgrade, Program for Culture and Art, Belgrade, Serbia Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51191/issn.2637-1898.2025.8.15.41

Keywords:

history of radio, noise, “radio-film”, Ars Acustica, radio art, Sound Workshop

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the Radio Belgrade’s Sound Workshop series and to shed light on the experimental trends that preceded it. In the first part, the author examines the reasons for establishing Sound Workshop at the beginning of 1985 and determines, from a chronological and conceptual point of view, its place among other European series of the same type. The second part of the paper explores the initial tendencies and early works of the acoustic art in Radio Belgrade, which preceded the founding of the Sound Workshop and became part of its reprise collection. The final part of the paper deals with the first appearance of the terms “radio art”, “radio film” and “bruitism” in the Belgrade cultural circles (early 1920s, zenithist Ljubomir Micić) and the realisations of the first radio collages in the country (late 1930s, writer and director of Radio Belgrade, Veljko Petrović).

Author Biography

Đorđe Malavrazić, Radio Belgrade, Program for Culture and Art, Belgrade, Serbia

Đorđe Malavrazić is a cultural essayist and media historian. He was editor-in-chief of the Drama Program of Radio Belgrade (1983-1986) during the period of its greatest international succes, when three awards were won at the most prestigious radio festival Prix Italia and one Premio Ondas in Barcelona, along with a large number of recognitions at the Yugoslav Radio Week in Ohrid. He is one of the founders, in 1985, of the Festival of Documentary Radiophony (FEDOR) and the initiator, in the same year, of the reputable Sound Workshop series, which is part of the European Ars Acustica network.
He founded and edited for a long time the first all-day cultural channel in Serbia, Radio Belgrade 2, and was co-author of the book-catalogue Elitism for all about that program. He is the author of the books The Upper Abyss of Sound, dedicated to the drama editor Neda Depolo, and Philosophical Heritage Neglected and Illuminated, dialogue with Slobodan Žunjić. He also published two representative anthologies of texts with his forewords: Sixty-Eights: Personal Histories and Literature and Radio.

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