Weekend was broadcast in 1930 and is one of the oldest pieces of radio art. It was created by German artist Walter Ruttman who is best known as a filmmaker. Ruttman directed the 1927 film classic, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City which is a non-narrative visual collage of Berlin. A year after completing Symphony of a Great City, Walter Ruttman proposed making “cinema without images,” namely an “acoustic picture” of a Berlin weekend. The Berlin Radio Hour commissioned this project, and it took Ruttman two years to produce it. Ruttman created his sounds recordings on a film that recorded sound –something called the tri-ergon process, so his piece Weekend is literally a cinema without images. Weekend is a composition that relies on sound, rhythm, and musicality to convey a loose narrative about the modern experience of the weekend.

Five years after making Weekend, Walter Ruttman worked as an assistant to Leni Riefenstahl on the Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will. This connection to Nazi propaganda raises questions about Ruttman’s politics, ethics, and the aesthetics of his earlier film and radio work. - Described by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner.