Surfing from Twitter > Lux Associate Scheme > Patricia Lennox-Boyd > Monika Bobinska > Benedictions. Unsure what would be unleashed on me as I clicked on a link named simply Dot, I found myself watching an entire episode of Eastenders. To be completely honest, even as the theme tune was playing and only after watching Dot Cotton talking into a tape recorder for 10 minutes did I realise the full extent of what was happening.“Pretty Baby”, Eastenders Episode 3526 features Dot Cotton (played by June Brown) talking into a tape recorder for 25 minutes. Had I been a huge Eastenders fan, what would this episode have meant? I remember (I used to be an avid Coronation Street fan)how (what felt like) the entire United Kingdom came behind Deidre in her unjust court case. There is something about these fictional encounters entering the real world that fascinates me.

As the nineties powered-on …  the world grew into a smaller place, it became more gullible as a media society. … Worldwide Players came to embody the global power of the media, but also the danger of manipulating politics, and the public’s perception of history and reality alike. War was staged as a reality TV show. … Special effects were no longer the monopoly of Hollywood, and videogaming turned real as smart missiles zoomed in on their targets. … Spectacle  replaced critical distance and obscured the reality of the war being waged in the Gulf. … Suddenly the news industry had transformed itself into a surreal shopping zone: … what the media was selling was history itself. Soon reality would be mistaken for a commercial break.
       Johan Grimonprez: Remote Control

The context that I watched this in does not make me want to watch any more Eastenders. Not only do I understand that this episode was a one off but I understand all the references, who the characters are and the world they are referring to just by being alive in the UK! It doesn’t matter that I don’t watch Eastenders and it certainly doesn’t matter that I don’t watch X Factor or that I was ambivalent during the peak of the MP’s expenses crisis. The media creates such a furore about these that I can’t help but pay attention to them.

According to the simulation thesis, the viewer’s faculty for distinguishing between reality and fiction is disabled by the medium. The primary reality is therefore blurred or replaced by a second, delusional one.
       Absolute Emptiness. The Null-Medium, or Why all Complaints about Television are Irrelevant: Hans Magnus Enzensberger

During a live televised show, hundreds of production teams and camera crews meet in a large room to film an event. The camera crews move around and film the action. Meanwhile, the production teams work hard to report what’s being said, documenting the movement and the feeling of excitement that takes place within the room. This goes on for hours.

Back to the episode, was it successful because it was so different to the 3525 episodes that came before it?

As one reviewer said at the time, “Enjoyable as this Albert Square indulgence was, I suspect that most fans will be hoping this one-hander remains a one-off.”

Notes from Benedictions Editorial:
(Benedictions is a project by Patricia Lennox-Boyd and Jamie Stevens)
-Layered into a palimpsest of superimpositions, C/O/N/S/T/R/U/C/T (1974) multiplies one film five times within a single projected image. The image oscillates between the de-calibrated but cloned sequences, which concurrently synchronise and depart from one another within each frame of this 26 minute film.
-The contemporary demand for artists to announce their self-reflexivity in artworks often results in the plundering and transformation of ‘materialist’ strategies into recognised formal devices. Such vapid transferals of serious ideas are what Benedictions seeks to resist.Our intention with the publications and adjunct public events is to consider artistic positions through their own terms with whatever results,rather than fostering patronising reverence as a default perspective.
-David Rodowick aptly defines the structuralist objective (and specifically Gidal’s) as ‘to perform the seemingly impossible task of defining, over and against the massive domination of film by narrative style and ideology, a series of negative strategies capable of derailing history.’3 This is film- making as pessimism – part of a relentless endeavour against the affirmative images of late capitalism. But in the act of derailment, history is also defined and given form. Even if this form is of a capitalist phantom.
– Gidal vigorously directs our reading of his films through the use of the inherent manipulatory devices of film (zooming, panning, editing, printing, etc), an awareness of which is demanded of the viewer.
-Gidal ultimately wants us, as viewers, to be engaged in an activity of seeing, whereby the production of meaning in any film is performed by individual viewers for its duration ‘constantly intervening in the arena of confrontation with the given reality.’
-1 Gidal describes film-makers ‘like Ken Russell or Alfred Hitchcock’ as ‘fascists accepted by the fascist mentality of the passive viewer, the hysterical, catatonic viewer, sitting in his seat in total silence, fear and paranoia and thinking that it’s pleasure – when the real pleasure actually comes out of the work you do yourself, the dialectics you do…’ From an interview: Du Cane, John, ‘Upside Down Feature’, Time Out, (December, 1972).

Being written over 30 years ago, some parts of Local Television: Piped Dreams? (written by Andrew Bibby, Cathy Denford and Jerry Cross; Redwing Press, 1979. ISBN 0-906625-017) are clearly dated:

But much of what is written has a renewed relevence today with the government looking into a new network of local television, and the books feels like a great critique of the television experiments.

I can’t help but think that local television is unnecessary today. With the revolution described above already exceeded and a situation where it is possible to get your voice heard in a variety of ways online to an audience that is both local and international, it feels like a backwards step. Aside from YouTube, perhaps Current.TV is the modern day interpretation of the local tv experiments.
–

Below are some snippets from the book and relevent links:

http://itvwalesblog.com/2011/08/18/local-tv-the-pioneers/ – a blog post written by Adrian Masters: “It’s striking that Jeremy Hunt uses the argument that his experiment will boost the flow of local news and information. The authors of Piped Dreams say that was one of the dreams of the 70s version. In reality that information tended to come from local authorities, public bodies, police, citizens’ advice bureaux who produced their own items. And given that the most common motive was to ‘gain publicity for their particular cause or organisation’, the result was long, often unwatchable time-fillers.”

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/tv/local-tv-services/ – the ofcom website about the new local tv projects and a map of possible sites.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/20/jeremy-hunt-local-tv – an article from The Guardian written by Maggie Brown: “That’s the problem with this bid by Hunt to create a new tier of local media. The whiff of public money is very powerful – while the Muxco solution seems redolent of the very thing local TV should not be about: a top down, centrally directed approach.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-14077754 – from the BBC, lessons that can be learnt from America. Is it really just about the advertising?

http://mediablogged.mediaweek.co.uk/2011/11/04/is-co-operation-the-secret-to-local-tv-success/

Notes
Community Television in Britain: A critique
-Why television? Why fund any communications medium? Couldn’t the necessary expenditure be put to use in other more socially useful ways? Someone has to produce answers, implicit or explicit, to these questions – but it’s certainly not the ‘community’ that makes the decisions.
-Those who do get involved are not led to examine their motives by the staff, whose role it has never been to challenge them to justify their ideas.

Restrictions, Restraints
The Stations board of directors

-Certainly it is true that attempts to ‘demystify’ and ‘deprofessionalise’ the media may involve potential conflicts with the interests of workers who earn a living from the industry…
-”I was against the idea of having anybody with professional broadcast experience because I think that would have carried with it too many preconceptions and a dependence on resources that we simply wouldn’t have.”
-The media ‘radicals’ are almost to a man fine examples of “bourgeois individualism” incarnate.
-When the underlying ideology is revealed and… discredited, the contradictions don’t disappear – but the political issues to be faced in resolving them become clear.

Moving Forward
-It’s no use being naive about communications media. Political domination requires control of communications and that necessitates controlling an moulding the technology.
-What we’re trying to point out is that the use of video for community purposes is, realistically, just an insignificant part of a business whose real interests lie a vast distance from fine-sounding ideas of ‘bringing television to the people’. And anyone involved in the cable television projects, or in independent video projects, must be aware that developments in television are moving in quite the opposite direction. That said, it is true of course that technological innovations are making quite a difference in community video.
-Another important development in the technology is that of ‘digital’ technique
-The invasion of privacy by computers is equally a cause for concern – the Police National Computer in Hendon has at least 24 million records on it. The possibility of direct linking between video surveillance systems and computer stores is not a pleasant prospect.
-Are the people in Swindon and Milton Keynes given the chance to make programmes about their immediate locality, when in fact the issues and decisions which concern them are being discussed and decided and national – or international – level? Far from demystifying, are the projects only mystifying further, by turning attention away from important areas of concern?
-It will be interesting to see whether, now that some of the more interesting suggestions on local radio in the Annan report seem unlikely… people will take the law into their own hands…. Perhaps illegality is the only possibility.
-No project operates in a vacuum. All absolute philosophies like this are impossible to achieve; they treat the world undialectically, and disregard practical limiting factors…. But any future local media project… must start with some practical guidelines for its work. These aims must be development on an evolving, flexible basis, through experimentation and as external influences and restraints change.
-Early in Channel 40’s development, technical manager Cliff Evans hypothesised a local television station based not in a central building but in a touring van, able to operate in different areas of a town at different times, and plugging into a cable system (or raising a temporary aerial) from these locations.
-We are interested too in short-term or one-off use of distribution facilities, which can escape the less desirable effects of a constant, regular transmission schedule… The rather more ambitious project in the Vale of Leven, Dunbartonshire, took over a vacant cable channel for six weeks in 1976…. Although the practise at Vale TV was rather more chaotic, one senses that the impact and novelty of Vale TV might have been lost had an on-going ‘station’ emerged and tried dutifully to transmit programmes over a longer period of time.
-Collective work is also seen as less efficient than individual endeavour.
–

Over time, the Channel 40 workers unionised themselves. As with anything, with time and repetition, a project with innocent, revolutionary or dreamy aims to challenge a norm either takes on many of the traits of the thing they’re challenging or, perhaps less severely, finds its own traits which need challenging or become staid. Perhaps there’s something important about a one off.

Television, we are informed, is not about the programming that we all think we’re sitting down to watch, but a box designed to keep humans apart and make us want to consume goods. Oddly, it created a new sociability because with everybody experiencing the same thing, it didn’t matter that we were all apart. Test Card F explains that while we may be enjoying these programmes, the real reason for the networks and the broadcasting is converse to what we might expect: the simple reason for the programmes existence is to make you receptive to the adverts.

The idealogical ‘bent’ of what is transmitted may be important but it is the maintenance of viewer attention–Being There, not something else or doing something else–that is all-important. The shows, soaps and scandals are simply the minimum required to ensure that reception. Programmers don’t care what’s on as long as the set takes centre stage in social life.

The book is produced brilliantly, from the opening “quote” from John Major to the final words that tell you what you already know, it is filled with great essays on dissent, weird anecdotes and illustrations in a cut and paste format. If there’s any one issue, it is that I felt that the were missing one key factor in their brutal slaughter of the worlds old favourite gadget, in the same way that many anarchist texts seem to ignore something, perhaps it is something to do with why people create or want to be a part of television, or perhaps its this statement at the end of the book:

“…[Ideally, I like to avoid the media; I don't own a telly and don't read newspapers, but I keep my eyes open. I see newspaper advertising boards and I can easily walk into a newsagents and read the dailies. If I so choose, I can keep myself informed of what the media is spouting whilst retaining my distance. Friends and conversations with other folks are probably the best sources of what to write about]…”

It would be great to read a follow up to this, how the same anonymous writers see the world as having changed with the proliferation of the social web, interactive TV and the slow fall of Rupert Murdoch.
–
Below are a few quotes and images from the book that I highlighted.
The notion of ‘currency’ carries with it a necessary redundance for all that has passed before. Knowledge becomes a highly perishable commodity of transient utility. If we are to talk about how we live, we are expected to talk only of what is deemed to be ‘happening’, in the news, today. All who wish to communicate by written of spoken word are forced or acquiesce in orientating their attention upon the latest issue, event or fad. As the definition of ‘importance’ changes daily we either go with this meaningless flow or appear hopelessly out of date.

Ninja Turtle Pizzas by any means necessary
-It’s a society-sized delusion, fooling ourselves to be happy that we’re not unhappier
-… a class which has always sneered then quietly lapped up both upper class and working class culture to hide its own lack of any culture at all.
-”Had we produced something truly radical then there is no way it would have been screened on public television. There are government restrictions, and all kind of limitations imposed by big corporations that are shaping what you can see. Our aim was to home into that small margin that lies between bringing up radical statements and to be allowed to voice them.” Paper Tiger TV
-The conversion of communication between human beings into a commodity is the political economy of the active sender and the passive consumer/reciever. The issue … is to create our own autonomous means of communication.Bigger Arts Grants Longer chains
-Sponsorship of ‘independent’ video is an insignificant part of a business whose real interests lie a vast distance from some kind of ‘people’s TV’
-All these places like Video Umbrella seem to be set up to help ex-St Martin’s students get jobs with Channel 4.

That’s not Television, that’s Channel 40!
-Six community cable channels were set up in Britain in the seventies on the lines of U.S. public access stations along with funding for facilitators’ wages. Channel 40, in Milton Keynes was funded by the Development Corporation in charge of constructing this new towns development.
-When labour returned to power in 1974 and reinstated the Annan Committee, who may it known that Pay TV would not be one of their recommendations for the future of broadcasting, the cable companies prompty closed down the projects in Wellingborough, Greenwich and Bristol.
-Workers at the local stations had the best progressive intentions. They were breaking new ground on broadcasting, at the forefront, they believed, of new ways of seeing and new mediums of communication. It was a lot more than funding problems though that dashed their hopes. Their facilities got used by far fewer people that originally anticipated, and those who did already had easy access to the media.
-Project workers found that ‘community’ access is as false a proposition as consensus politics… For what is the community, but only global class conflict in miniature.
-Undoubtably, the bottom line for the backers of the project was profit. For some of the workers involved it was the belief that if you teach someone how to use a video camera, they will never watch television in the same way again.
-They certainly don’t look like ‘television’ as everyone knows it, but they don’t look like anything else either.
-The pressure to produce… discouraged experimentation and instead made for simpler (and so longer) programmes for transmission.
-The high hopes of the late sixties were dashed to disillusion when put into practice.

The Politicians Mirror.
-The media forges a version of a brave new world which is already completely forged, a world of virtual economic recovery and super soaraway market confidence trickery.
-If it isn’t reported, it didn’t happen.
-“Oxygen of publicity” contains the implication: the media machine will determine what initiatives will survive, and what initiatives will suffocate.
-We don’t need to watch television or work with television — our lives and potential are a thousand times more fascinating.Manufacturing dissent
-People are forced into ridiculous stunts to get their message across.
-A groups fascination for publicity can end up in doing things simply in order to get it, while liasing with the media- to get them to come and loo at you can take up so much time you can’t get anything else done… for who’s the person to go and do an interview – the best talker, the most photogenic, the person who did it last time?… Our will to live is cut down to a soundbite; our collective strength is reduced to a single figurehead who’s easily compromised or rubbished… “We have the image of the movement to think of, people won’t want to join a movement of extremists”
-If an event is not covered, did it ‘happen’?… Have you ever resolved to take action due to something you’ve seen on TV… Appeals to the mass never threatens the basic structure of mass society itself. We attack the spectacle with the same weapon that imprints the order of passivity on our daily lives.
-But the character of revolutionary movement is not exciting enough, not able to match the artificial, the contrived, the excitement of the cop car chases. The stunt must become ever more ridiculous.
-The short span of attention, jumpting from one issue to the next, is the response to someone else’s definition of crisis. We come to expect instant results, the immediate resolution of TV detective drama, and when we don’t get them we give up too easily, lapse into cynicism or jump onto the next bandwagon.
-… being spoken to by the ‘alternative’ leadership is so dull that political groups have to rely on theatrical (usually musical) shows to be at all attractive
-(Rallying every Saturday begs the question:) what are we doing the rest of the week?
-It’s stunning to find that some groups of people still pander to the media expecting to get fair treatment, then moan when they get misquoted and stereotyped.The whole job’s fucked
-We waste our own time studying the screen to find our reflection.

The initial aim of Tethervision was clear: frequent, short videos on or around contemporary art in all its manifestations. Over time, this has developed into other areas but in taking it forward, we intend to explore several methods. In the coming months, we hope that the Tethervision website will evolve into an informal resource that will provide information about the books, articles, films, lectures and conversations we have around the ideas of artist television.

One early question in response to some of our current reading on the subject is in relation to power and control. Television ‘reduces viewers to mere consumers’…. ‘doesn’t allow you to talk back’…. ‘we have no right of reply anyway, no real opportunity to take part in the debate’. These statements were written in 1979, in a book entitled ‘Local Television: Piped Dreams?’. The internet revolution, Web 2.0, Twitter, interactive television – all these things have created the impression of a real change in media control but is this an illusion?

In developing Tethervision, we don’t want to get caught up (purely) in the technological advances of the medium; the way it might mutate, evolve or hybridise into something entirely different. Rather, we are interested in exploring the kinds of programming that can be placed within this context, within the Idiot Box.

There are some questions, perhaps obvious, that we would like to explore and if possible, answer, in no particular order:

What is the role of the artist in the world of internet broadcasting?

What is YouTube and internet television?

Years ago, an incredible exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester showed how in the future we could pause and rewind live TV. In many ways, we are living in the future that we imagined! Is this what we expected?

With the potential introduction of YouView, internet and television broadcasting will have the opportunity to evolve into a new product with the capacity to act a platform for new models of interactions between producers and the viewer. Or will this new hybrid existing across the two mediums merely serve as a reincarnation of the established corporate power dictating to the consumer, what they want and need and expect from their existence?

As a society becoming consumed by the expectation of having information immediately at our fingertips, everything is reported, everything is recorded and everything is replayed. Is there too much? Will we hit a tipping point? What will happen to the 2 days worth of video content uploaded to YouTube every minute? As more and more documents are produced and fill more and more datacentres, will bankrupt countries become data islands, huge 100 mile long warehouses filled with redundant documents that people thought would give them their 15 minutes? Who decides what’s important and what should survive? Do we need to have a spring clean?

Somebody once told us about 2026 being the year that everything will change and humans will bond with machines. Are we destroying ourselves?

 

There will be several outcomes to the current research, one of which will be a series of three Pilots for new programs that we will produce and commission, part funded by Arts Council England.

Are all curators failed television presenters? Are all artists failed celebrities? Are all TV-quizzes intrinsically absurd? Is contemporary art a failed joke? The second episode of Sideshow’s own art-themed game-show, Black Swans, hosted by Duncan Allen. Taking inspiration from every TV quiz show under the sun, from Blankety Blank to Pat Sharpe’s Fun House through Shooting Stars, Black Swans is be filmed before a live studio audience, hold regular team captains and reoccurring rounds; all designed to deconstruct the game-show format and celebrate the quirks and curiosities of contemporary art.

episode 3

hosted by

Duncan Allen

team 1

Niki Russell (captain)

Claire Simpson

Fay Nicolson

team 2

Rob Blackson (captain)

Alia Pathan

Robin Kirkham

special guest

Bruce Asbestos

sound ©

Meteor Theme Tune

The Feelies – Crazy Rhythms

The Clash – Wrong ‘Em Boyo

video ©

Harry Potter

Tsui Kuang-Yu

cameras

Hannah Phillips

Lauren O’Grady

Samuel Mercer

live mixing

Liam Aitken

editing

Samuel Mercer

produced by

TETHER

for

SIDESHOW

filmed on

December 16th 2010

thanks to

Nottingham Trent University

Broadway Cinema

David Blandy

New College Nottingham

All of our volunteers

Are all curators failed television presenters? Are all artists failed celebrities? Are all TV-quizzes intrinsically absurd? Is contemporary art a failed joke?

The second episode of Sideshow’s own art-themed game-show, Black Swans, hosted by Duncan Allen.

Taking inspiration from every TV quiz show under the sun, from Blankety Blank to Pat Sharpe’s Fun House through Shooting Stars, Black Swans is be filmed before a live studio audience, hold regular team captains and reoccurring rounds; all designed to deconstruct the game-show format and celebrate the quirks and curiosities of contemporary art.

Credits

host
Duncan Allen

team 1
Niki Russell (captain)
Jon Burgerman
Alison Lloyd

team 2
Rob Blackson (captain)
Jeanie Finlay
Lesley Guy

special guest
Bruce Asbestos

sound
Meteor theme tune
The Creepers – Baby’s on Fire

cameras
Hannah Phillips
Clare Harris

stage assistant
Hugh Dichmont

live mixing
Liam Aitken

editing
Samuel Mercer

produced by
TETHER

for
SIDESHOW

filmed on
November 19th 2010