Dingus - Ep 1 The House of Glass
Mike Cooter /Resonance (UK 2022)
31 min Episode 1 of 6
Dingus is a six-part radio drama produced by CBS and recorded at the height of the 1943 flu pandemic that swept through Hollywood. Denied of a marquee cast and blighted by a curious obsession with the object that drives its narrative, this innovative and formally-reflexive oddity disappeared almost completely without trace.
In 2010 artist Mike Cooter set out to find and rehabilitate this elusive artefact, initiating an 11-year journey that culminates in the re-emergence of Dingus – to be broadcast in full by ResonanceFM, podcast and archived at radiodingus.com
Ostensibly a detective drama, taking its name from an American colloquialism for an object without name or of indistinct identity (from the German ‘ding’ / ‘thing’), Dingus emerges across six episodes and a supplementary documentary as a rumination on objecthood itself: how we claim to understand some-thing, and the effects that it might have. At once both utilising and unpicking the narrative conceit of the MacGuffin, Dingus can be heard to reverse the logic of an object that serves to drive a narrative, functioning instead as an armature for the mysterious artefact at its heart: the MacGuffin as sculpture.
Confused? This series merges fact and reality with a hyper-realistic recreation of the 1940’s American detective Radio Drama genre. Perfect listening for a dark winter’s evening.
Written, directed and produced by Mike Cooter
Executive Producer Ed Baxter
Cast: Mirchell Mullen, John Christian Bateman, Alexendra Metaxa
A Resonance Production with support from Jerwood Arts, The Elephant Trust and The Henry Moore Foundation