Unwelcome Visit--Topology of a Media Experience

The research project I will carry out in the framework of the Schrödinger Fellowship is an integral component of my habilitation project "Unwelcome Visit - Topology of a Media Experience." This study aims to investigate mediality as a historical experience. Methodologically, it deploys a dispositif analysis following Michel Foucault, directed at identifying the conditions under which the experiential field of mediality was able to emerge. This analysis addresses three levels, distinct in terms of their perspective but empirically overlapping: an archaeology of media knowledge-forms, a genealogy of media power relations, and a typology of media subjectivation modes. These will be investigated through the case of a chronotope of twenty-four hours between May 13 and 14, 1933, in Vienna, which is marked by the "Turks Deliverance Celebrations" held by the Austrian National Socialists and the Home Guards. The anniversary of Vienna`s deliverance from the Turks was oriented from the outset upon processes of mass communication: the rallies were prepared by the party-political press, partially broadcast live on radio, and captured in propaganda films. To create a counter-public sphere, the Social Democrats published programmatic editorials and organized open-air concerts in the municipal tenements of Vienna. While the Burgtheater presented Mussolini`s play "Campo di Maggio," the large cinemas were screening Fritz Lang`s sound movie "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse," a film banned in Germany. My analysis aims to reconstruct the media events of this time-space and to trace them back to the media dispositifs of the interwar period of which they are the effects. During my twelve-month stay abroad, I will develop the knowledge-historical basis of the study. The planned research project starts out from two points in the chosen chronotope: on the one hand, the radio broadcast of the speeches that were made at the Home Guards` "Turks Deliverance Celebration," and on the other an essay about Edward Bernays that was published the same day in Vienna`s most important bourgeois newspaper, the "Neue Freie Presse." Austrian radio had recently commissioned the Economic-Psychological Research Center led by Paul Lazarsfeld to carry out a survey of its listeners, the results of which were presented in fall 1932. The value of the correlation between programs and social groups established in the final report is indicated by the newspaper article on the nephew of Sigmund Freud who, the journalist claims, was pursuing propaganda in New York as an "exact science" in order to manipulate public opinion by means of "group leaders." On the invitation of Department of Media Studies at The New School and additionally supervised by Prof. Mark Crispin Miller of New York University, I will investigate the PR practices that Bernays developed in the 1920s. The investigation is guided by the hypothesis that Lazarsfeld`s pioneering study in Vienna created the empirical counterpart to Bernays`s propaganda techniques. In my six-month return phase at the Institute for Communication Studies, University of Vienna, I will publish the results of my research and compile an application for the habilitation program APART of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, where there are synergetic opportunities for cooperation.

Erwin-Schrödinger-Stipendiat des Wissenschaftsfonds (FWF) auf die Vorstellung souveräner Nationen und Persönlichkeiten, wie sie im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert aufkam. Die mediale Schaltzentrale in "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse" gleicht wiederum disziplinarischen Institutionen, seien es Gefängnisse oder Spitäler, die sich im Lauf des 19. Jahrhunderts in Europa und den USA ausbildeten. Lazarsfelds Zielgruppen und die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit von Bernays kündigen allerdings ein neues Zeitalter an: Die zweite Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts ist nicht mehr von Einschließungen und Verboten, sondern von offener Kommunikation geprägt, die kontrolliert und gesteuert wird. Erste Ergebnisse des Forschungsprojekts sind im Juli 2014 auf der Webseite http://campusmedius.net erschienen. Um den ausgewählten Zeit-Raum sowohl beschreibend als auch erklärend zu erschließen, kommen zwei sich ergänzende Darstellungsformen zum Einsatz: Während der topographische Überblick, der von Bruno Latours Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie beeinflusst ist, als interaktive Karte gestaltet wurde, wird sich die topologische Analyse, die an das Dispositivkonzept von Michel Foucault anknüpft, einer argumentativen Montage der historischen Zeitungsartikel, Archivalien, Fotografien, Radiosendungen und Filmausschnitte bedienen. Das Forschungsprojekt wird von Simon Ganahl geleitet, von Rory Solomon und Darius Daftary programmiert und von Mallory Brennan visuell gestaltet. What does the theater play "Campo di Maggio" by Benito Mussolini have in common with Fritz Lang's crime film "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse"? How is a Turks Deliverance Celebration in Schönbrunn connected to a Freedom Celebration at the Karl-Marx-Hof building? What are the links between Paul Lazarsfeld's social research and Edward Bernays' public relations? All of them are actors that appeared on one weekend in Vienna--during precisely twenty-four hours--in May 1933. The Austrian media scholar Simon Ganahl has mapped the events and presents the condensed time-space in the form of an interactive website. When National Socialist ministers landed at Aspern airfield near Vienna on Saturday afternoon of May 13, 1933, a crowd of press people awaited them. The "Reichspost," the semi-official newspaper of the governing Christian Social Party, had previously referred to the visit from Germany in a leading article as "unwelcome." A major Home Guard rally was planned for Sunday morning, with the aim of recalling that Austria had defended itself once before against "foreign spirit," two hundred and fifty years previously. While in 1683 it was Turkish troops trying to capture Vienna, now Russian Bolshevists were projected as pushing westwards. "In the struggle for our homeland we shall stand firm and true together!" Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß called into the Radio-Verkehrs-AG microphones and the cameras of the Fox Tönende Wochenschau. What took place in the grounds of Schönbrunn Palace on May 14, 1933, was a national media event. The only reports on the Social Democrats' "Freedom Celebrations," held as a counter-event in the Gemeindebau that Sunday, however, were in their own party newspapers. The German politicians, including the later Governor-General of occupied Poland Hans Frank, were the subject of great journalistic interest, by contrast. They grinned at photographers, waved at cameramen, invited to a press conference at the German embassy, and held a National Socialist "Turks Deliverance Celebration" in the Engelmann Arena on Saturday evening. At the very same time, Werner Krauss was playing a Napoleon who demanded a "temporary dictatorship" to save his fatherland, on stage at the Burgtheater. The sensible leader devised by Mussolini in "Campo di Maggio" is in direct contrast to the insane criminal as Fritz Lang presented him in "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse." Banned in Germany, the crime film was released in Austria on Friday, May 12, 1933, and was screened all over Vienna that weekend. The sound film's protagonists are not people but the media devices that determine the plot: telephones, loudspeakers, and gramophones. Is it coincidence that the "Neue Freie Presse" ran an essay with the title "Humbug, Bluff und Ballyhoo" on Sunday, May 14, 1933? While the chancellor's speech at Schönbrunn was broadcast live on the radio, readers of the bourgeois newspaper were told that a nephew of