EA1EG: Shifted Listening/
Desplazar la escucha
Desplazar la escucha
Vendedores de Humo
(Pablo Santacana López and Marta M. Legido), 2026
(Pablo Santacana López and Marta M. Legido), 2026
EA1EG: Shifted Listening/Desplazar la escucha takes this question as its point of departure, tracing a history of amateur radio into a groundbreaking study of visual culture, disability theory, and mid-century geopolitics.
The publication is one component of a broader, three-part research project that also encompasses an interactive online platform and a tactile and auditory exhibition opening at the Provincial Historical Archive of Ávila in September 2026.
The volume originates from the archive of 6,877 QSL cards—postcards exchanged by radio operators worldwide to confirm two-way shortwave contact—collected between 1952 and 1991 by Alfredo Abella Martín. Blinded by an unexploded Civil War grenade in 1944, Abella became the first licensed blind radio amateur in Ávila, Spain, and later founded the Association of Blind Radio Amateurs of Spain (ARIES). Operating under the call sign EA1EG from his domestic station, Abella forged an international web of contacts during the diplomatic isolation of the Franco dictatorship. Now housed at the Provincial Historical Archive of Ávila, this extensive repository grounds a three-part project comprising an online research platform (ea1eg.com), a tactile and auditory exhibition, and this publication.
Moving beyond the conventional view of QSL cards as mere technical receipts, the book treats these printed paper artifacts as a global atlas of vernacular self-representation. In its first section, the publication constructs a rich theoretical framework through narrative essays, historical contextualization, and cross-disciplinary dialogues. It explores the social rituals of the airwaves, the non-visual methodologies of shortwave listening, and the alternative spatial consciousness required to navigate international frequencies under political censorship and physical blindness.
In its second section, the volume unfolds into a curated visual catalog, organizing the physical cards along thematic and ideologically loaded lines. The book documents how operators from Leningrad to Louisiana framed their local identity for an unseen international audience—deploying state-sanctioned symbols, regional folklore, National Catholic imagery, and Cold War technological optimism. By bridging sound studies, visual culture, media archaeology, and disability theory, EA1EG: Shifted Listening provides distributors, institutions, and readers with a subtle, multifaceted examination of how microhistories of listening challenge and redefine our understanding of visual culture.
Website project:
Contributions by:
Cristina Arribas,
Marc da Costa,
Miguel González (EA3GZA),
Sheila Jasanoff,
Georgina Kleege,
María Rosón and
Zira Box
Languages:Spanish, English, and German
448 pages, 19 x 12 cm, Softcover
978-3-913130-00-2
Zoe Ritts,
Jan Engelke,
Almudena Cazorla
Production:
Ramón de Fontecha
Financed with the support of Stiftung Kunstfonds, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM), Culture Moves Europe, and Junta de Castilla y León.