Olivia J. Bennett
is a writer, editor & critic.
She works across narrative development, editorial strategy and cultural insight for creative, design-led projects.
Her writing spans screen, sound, software and the systems that shape them.
She works across narrative development, editorial strategy and cultural insight for creative, design-led projects.
Her writing spans screen, sound, software and the systems that shape them.
• • •
Premiering in Australia at the 2020 Melbourne International Film Festival, Serbian filmmaker Marija Stojnić’s experimental documentary Speak So I Can See You (2019) is a captivating aural bricolage that, upon first glance, uncovers the history of one of Europe’s oldest radio stations—Radio Belgrade. However, like the ghostly legend of Russia’s unmanned station MDZhB, the film’s focus is on what is left unsaid, the existential questions this silence produces, and how the answers to such questions can mutate over time.
Paraphrased from a quotation attributed to Socrates, the film’s title suggests that a person’s character is reflected less in their face and more in their speech. This line of thinking is certainly at odds with our pandemic present in which the rise of Zoom, and its many iterations, reveal that speech alone is not enough. On the other hand, as was the case for the Black Lives Matter black-tile trend that swept Instagram in June, a picture (or its formal lack thereof) is said to speak a thousand words. This performance of allyship and its optical art of deception, which was subsequently denounced by another tile that read ‘silence is violence’—is a sentiment that reverberates throughout Stojnić’s film.
In whatever way we bear witness to an event—whether it be in judgement, in calculation, or in reflection—our position as an observer is unsettling. Stojnić’s film is first and foremost one of close observation, with shots lingering on performers and staff in recording studios, offices and archive rooms, capturing moments of concentrated movement. Within the documentary genre, such camera work is often used to imply a sincere depiction of reality. As viewers, we observe the happenings inside Radio Belgrade as if we are not seen, our present-absence fostering a relational intimacy that does not directly influence the action on screen, but feels uncomfortable nonetheless.
LISTEN 1
By privileging sound over image, through both the content of the radio station and the context of its documentation, Stojnić toys with the power of the observational camera position. Littered between the sequences of human activity are slow-motion shots that track empty corridors, stairways and room corners. As if sedated, we are carried by polyphonic sound into the hidden depths of Radio Belgrade.
These soundscapes reference the history of sci-fi and horror, particularly films in which architecture and its technology turn upon its inhabitants, such as Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) and Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972). In Speak So I Can See You, Stojnić transforms a basement corridor into a frightening chamber of horrors, with clashing voices and warbling static pulling us reluctantly towards a sinister door.
LISTEN 2
Bombed and occupied by German forces during WWII, Radio Belgrade has served as both witness to, and bastion against, oppressive forces. In 1968, marking the first mass protests since the war, students of Belgrade University fought for social justice and were met with police brutality. ‘If someone were to ask me now if 1968 never existed, I would say no,’ laments the voice of an older man as we watch footage of a present-day protest marching past Radio Belgrade. ‘Years went in this order, 1967 and then came 1969, 1968 never existed. But it did exist…after all.’
The context of this footage, purposefully stripped and universalised, undulates temporally to remind us that history does repeat—that the problems of the past persevere. Stojnić’s careful selection and placement of these soliloquies require that we hold these difficult histories in our throats, just as we search for new ways to describe the world around us. ‘[It is] the 277th Journey Into Words since the long-forgotten Ministry of Education and Science described orthography as nonsense,’ a broadcaster introduces. ‘[The] 17th Journey Into Words since we realised that the government is a completely useless thing.’
LISTEN 3
Still from Speak So I Can See You (2019), dir. Marija Stojnić.
LISTEN 4
In blurring the borders between fiction and documentary by shifting the perspective of Radio Belgrade through sound, Stojnić’s film materialises (if not induces) the type of mania Butler believes will allow a person to imagine the other-worldly possibilities needed to escape our violent present. By structuring a reality of ‘radical equality’, the non-violent force of Butler’s mania propels the narratives of sci-fi films that catastrophise the future. This dynamic entanglement of violent and non-violent forces sets a stage through which humans can directly engage with the future, and develop answers to age-old problems. Played out in Stojnić’s reimagination of Radio Belgrade, this invitation into mania may seem absurd. But there is something to be said of 2020 being referred to by many as a ‘cultural reset’—a ‘reworlding’ of sorts.
LISTEN 5
Still from Speak So I Can See You (2019), dir. Marija Stojnić.
LISTEN 6
Like the teens of spiritual TikTok, we have (perhaps unwittingly) begun the manic search for answers in abstract realities. Overwhelmed by the glut of information that technology has afforded us, our clouded understanding of the world and the paranoia of this unknowingness have compelled us to create ‘ever more byzantine theories of the world.’ [2] As we slowly descend an elevator shaft into the depths of Radio Belgrade, James Bridle’s investigation of this ominous cloud is expressed neatly by the placement of this line: ‘the feeling of a horrendous cloud hangs over books,’ this obscurity growing ‘monstrous heads’ with actual faces that achieve ‘the monstrosity of what we call…fascism.’ If this pandemic is a ‘cultural reset’, Stojnić’s film invites us to imagine a reality that resists this monstrous drone sounding from the cold-war grey zone where we currently sit.
LISTEN 7
Despite our clouded comprehension of the world, Speak So I Can See You makes the importance of aural histories abundantly clear. Sound has the ability to completely transform our perception of a place, our relationship to an object, and our understanding of a memory. It is this transformative quality that gives us the ability to think outside the violent vibrational forces of a rising right. Through Stojnić’s coupling of observational footage and polyphonic sound we are placed in a pole position—antennae resonating with Radio Belgrade, but also with a world newly built by our wildest imaginations. If you were to ask me a year from now if 2020 ever existed, I would say yes and to those of you who would disagree, I would simply ask that you close your eyes and listen for the voices of people who are still yet to be seen.
• • •
Audio works sampled:
Andrei Tarkovsky, Solaris, (1972) - English Dub
‘Introduction to Cosmos: A Personal Voyage’ , Episode 1, The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean, aired September 23, 1980
Ben Fordham, 2GB radio interview with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, aired June 11, 2020
Timothy Morton, They are Here, lecture at The Nonhuman Turn Conference delivered May 4, 2012
Jesse Morath, Disconnect (2020), Reset (2020) and Somerset (2020), permission to sample granted by artist.
References:
- Judith Butler, The Force of Non-violence: The Ethical in the Political, (New York and London: Verso, 2020), p.31.
- James Bridle, New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future, (New York and London: Verso 2018), p.188.
Transcript [1]:
[Olivia Bennett] Returning home to Serbia after five years in the United States, Stojnić tuned into Radio Belgrade’s night programming.
[Marija Stojnić] ‘I had noticed that every time I turn the radio on and the sounds fills my room, my perception of that space becomes different. And night after night, as I would listen to this programming, I had noticed how my perception of my reality had started to shift my thinking process…The radio programming allowed me to reconnect with the city, in a beautiful way and feel at home again.’
[OB] ‘Alone together’ echoes pandemic advertisements from around the globe. Sitting by myself I often wonder how many other people are tuning in—what they’re doing, how they’re feeling, whether they’re thinking about me as well. ‘For the dear face in solitude, sleepless eyes are longing’, croons a solemn voice as we watch a night broadcaster roll a cigarette and stare blankly at his computer screen. ‘Why is the river murmuring tonight, that carries away my peace?’
Transcript [2]:
[MS] But the funny thing is I do not perceive it that way; I think maybe my brain is tuned to the bizarre. So I wasn’t making any direct references…
[OB] When Stojnić said this I remember my mind fixating on her use of the word ‘tune.’ I imagined her brain as a radio transmitter, a magnetic forcefield luring figures out from the void.
[MS] But I think that maybe the horror effect comes from from two places. The first one is we were really thinking, you know the cinematographer and I, we were really thinking how to emulate and kind of embody this weightless creature that is not human. That’s this creature of the radio that we really perceive—I really perceive the radio as a spaceship that travels through time and gathers fragments of our histories and our stories…
[OB] As if being pulled by an invisible hand, we move apprehensively toward a closed door in the murky basement of Radio Belgrade. High-pitched ringing starts to warble into rattling machine noises—’Solaris’, twice repeats a reserved female voice.
[Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) - English Dub]
[Kris Kelvin] What the devil is going on, this is ridiculous, open the door will you! Look, either you open up or I’ll break the door down.
[Doctor Sartorius] Alright I’ll open the door, but don’t you come in.
Transcript [3]:
[OB] As if strapped in a hospital stretcher, we look upwards at the acoustic ceiling of a recording studio, our eyes tracing the numbers of a flashing digital clock as melodic synths wash over our captive body. ‘Indelibly deep within man,’ an older male voice recites from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, ‘in the immeasurable vastness of his heart dwells a primordial unquenchable call for the divine song. Where does the primeval urge for a pure song stem from? Why does every human carry an un-erasable memory of this call? A question persistent, a question relentless, a question eternally inspiring. An answer never complete for the very question is endless, like the vastness itself, like the primordial secret itself.’
[MS] I think that at the time when I started making the film, and I was following everything that was happening in the US because that was my home at the time, and here in Serbia and then everywhere around the world, like there was this recent rise of far-right. And it was such a frightening trend…and it really caused a lot of anxiety in me and made me wonder, how is it possible?
[Introduction to Cosmos: A Personal Voyage , Episode 1, “The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean” aired September 23, 1980]
[Carl Sagan] We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads, but to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.
Transcript [4]:
[MS] I have an impression that the history repeats, the older I get, I think that some cycles repeat and that we are constantly faced with same challenges. Each generation falls into the same trap somehow and history does repeat, and I think that it is so vital to keep the history and memory present in the public spaces and in our daily lives. And I think that these voices from the past can make us feel less lonely and empower us. Because if you know that someone has already been through the same struggle you’re going through, it gives you something and you can learn from their path and you can learn ah…and just feel more protected because there are all these generations behind you that were seeking for the same solutions. But knowing this, I also think it’s very important to be creative and to play, to allow yourself to play and to invent new, and to constantly follow how the world has changed and is changing and to seek for new solutions.
Transcript [5]:
[MS] Sometimes the light is almost vibrating and it’s something that comes naturally from the neon lights in the building. We could have avoided it but we intentionally kept it in the shot. So we get this almost underwater impression and it’s there to kind of embody the movement of the radio wave.
[OB] Bellowing sounds of car horns, train tracks, bike bells and humming engines emerge as we slowly ascend the darkly lit stairs of Radio Belgrade’s foyer. We arrive cautiously at a brutalist display case and bust dedicated to Nikola Tesla as chirping birds, reversed intonations and electrical static flood our ears.
[MS] So we really wanted to become nonhumans and to see these machines and the machines are fearless. And maybe that’s what’s scary to us. You know, machines don’t really think like humans maybe but you know, as we go through the film we kind of figure out maybe we are merged in a way and maybe this radio has its own will and intentions.
Transcript [6]:
[MS] I spent a lot of time in Berlin in the past few years and I was really impressed by the way that city carries its history on its sleeve. Every step you can see the reminders of the world war two and the atrocities and tragedies in genocides that happened and human suffering. And the city’s carrying it with so much dignity, and so much compassion and love and warning that this could happen anytime, anywhere, and it felt like a true place of comfort and solace to be there.
[OB] I started thinking about Australia’s history and how it is hidden up our sleeve. I imagine Scott Morrison dressed as a crusty clown, pulling at a never-ending knotted string of multi-coloured handkerchiefs as he repeats…
[2GB presenter Ben Fordham’s interview with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison aired June 11, 2020]
[Scott Morrison] …there was no slavery in Australia.
[OB] Shivers begin to run down my spine.
Transcript [7]:
[MS] What’s happening around me? How is this possible? Why, why are things the way they are?
[Timothy Morton delivering their talk “They are Here” at The Nonhuman Turn Conference on May 4, 2012]
[Timothy Morton] The equipment itself creates a complex dance between visibility and invisibility, presence and absence, transparency and opacity, surroundings as tools that glint into presence like fish in a dark ocean and vanish.
[OB] If you do not listen to the words of another their presence will become invisible. Silence is violence but this is not a call to constantly speak, to speak over others, to add your voice to the cacophony that seeks to drown out the voices that need to be heard the most. 2020 cannot cease to exist because the world that was once yours to roam peacefully is no longer.
[MS] Exactly what you said now is the new meaning I was hoping for. I had no clue what would the new meaning be. But I had sense that there will be a new meaning to all those words. And that’s why it’s worth repeating them.