Der Verfassungsschutz (Homeland Security)

Starting in September 2016 HMKV presents, in cooperation with Deutschlandradio Kultur, a new series in the Lautsprecher:
THE CITY AS SEEN FROM ABOVE – Audio works and artistic radio features addressing the city and public space.
The view on the city becomes a constitutive element of the sound works: No matter if we listen to administrative officers who are secretly smoking on the rooftop and chatting about their problems or whether we listen to federal homeland security agents during an observation of suspect person in a hotel room across the street – one has the impression that these things are literally taking place in front of the window.

Der Verfassungsschutz
Karl-Heinz Bölling
Deutschlandradio Kultur 2013
50:54 Min.

Special agents A and B are observing a dangerous male subject in a hotel. Listening through their headphones, they register a suspicious silence in the neighboring room, they interpret and misinterpret the sounds they hear, they understand nothing and take notes of everything. To be able to >map< the stranger, they note down the sound of peeing, violin playing and even a cock's crow, until they are disturbed by the cleaning lady. »Cleaning ladies should be monitored as enemies of the state«, special agent A declares, »Stupidity is our most dangerous enemy. The more stupid a person is, the greater danger they present to the state«. But who exactly is dangerous for whom remains to be seen.

 

Karl-Heinz Bölling, born in Dortmund-Aplerbeck in 1947, is one of the most productive authors of radio plays in Germany. Deutschlandradio Kultur has produced many of his absurd, fantastic plays, most recently Irgendein Briefträger (Any mail carrier) in 2011.