While groups tending to argue politically frequently
included non-specialists in their productions, working on local themes and
organizing themselves independently, the artistic concepts were always
carried by the aim to expose the machine of illusion and suggestion that
television is. This was the case for initiatives as diverse as the
American feminist group
Guerrilla Girls, the critical New York network television
Paper Tiger TV, or the Leipzig-based pirate broadcaster Kanal X,
which was conceived in spring 1990 by the artist
Ingo Günther for the citizens' movement "
New Forum." In terms of Berlin,
Mike Steiner's Video Gallery should be named here; as part of the
Berlin Cable Pilot Project, it regularly broadcast programs from 1985 to
1990, featuring and treating video art much in the tradition of Gerry
Schum.
Katharina Sieverding: Reproduction, 1976
©Deutsche Bank Collection
Against the
background of the rapid technological development of private television
and the internet, it almost seems inevitable that the media utopias for a
"better television" should fail. While there were further attempts made
throughout the 90s to work alternatively in the field of television, and
entire art television broadcasters were born such as
Hallo TV in Berlin or Van Gogh TV's
Piazza virtuale - which was broadcast throughout Europe during
documenta IX in 1992 for 100 days via four satellites - due to a wide
diversion of interests, the liaison between art and television was always
a highly delicate affair. The digital revolution of the 90s not only
blurred the boundaries between television, film, and video, but also
contributed to establishing a new media pop culture that lent some humor
to the deconstructive strategies of early television art. If Charlotte
Moorman's invitation to the legendary
Johnny Carson Show in 1967 still constituted a provocation of bourgeois
taste in art and fed, as did Nam June Paik's appearance on
"Bio's Bahnhof" in the 1980s, from the image of the enfant
terrible, the fronts have long since grown closer. What seems scandalous
today are less the artists themselves than the concepts of certain TV
makers who now operate with the taboo-breaking methods already tested by
the avant-garde.
Nam June Paik performing worldwide via satelite transmission
at the opening of documenta VI, Kassel 1977
©Archiv Wulf Herzogenrath / Verlag der Kunst
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Thus, in view of the omnipresence of
reality TV, the utopian designs of play-along television come across as
the archaic remains of a lost cultural epoch. It is part of the irony of
history that current outgrowths of the TV industry such as "
Big Brother," "
I'm a Celebrity - get me out of here!" or "
Star Search" have ultimately fulfilled what the avant-garde of the 1970s
were seeking when they demanded that the private be made public. In the
Big Brother container, Valie Export's symbolic transferal of the family
everyday onto the television screen has become reality. The
exhibitionism of the would-be stars, which surpass all boundaries of
embarrassment, turns the critically motivated self-expression trips of the
performance generation into a sheer lust for spectacle, fed by an
insatiable
voyeurism on the part of the viewer. Ultimately, it's this component that
secures viewer ratings, calculating as it does the natural drives into its
equation. This gives rise to the question as to whether the call for more
publicity in early video art didn't necessarily lead to the dead end that
mass compatibility ultimately became. Perhaps art actually needs the
elitist niche of the museum after all, in order to create free space for
thought?
In the meantime, television has also taken art's place
regarding formal innovation. Music has conquered the image media. This is
why it's hardly surprising that the expensively produced
MTV clips by directors such as
Chris Cunningham or
Spike Jonze can now be obtained as DVD editions, or, in the case of
Cunningham, are being honored by exhibitions in art museums.
Chris Cunningham:
Aphex Twins
"Windowlicker", video stills, 1998/99
On the other hand, both formally and in the choice of their subjects, artists
today orient themselves along the dictates of the mass-media advertising
and consumerist world. Ultimately, what's fascinating about the current
situation is the fact that the categories of art and commerce,
enlightenment and entertainment, elite and popular have gotten mixed up to
such a degree. The viewer has to decide for him or herself what's good and
what's bad - and perhaps it's this, after all, that constitutes a late
victory of "Participation TV."
Translation: Andrea Scrima
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