MEDIARECYCLING, 1998

Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst Bremen (GAK) 1998

This project is dedicated to the videotape itself: as material, as body, as significant and as sculpture. The piece consists of three parts:

1. A modified VCR „spits“ out tape while playing. The tapes contain old recordings of daily TV consumption, which had been gathered through small ads. The tapes, due to static charge, briefly stick to the surface of the monitor before they fall to the ground and slowly fill up the installation space.

2. Sections of those tapes are randomly chosen by performers, cut with scissors, and taped back together in a different order. As the tape material is opaque, the editing process becomes unpredictable and can’t be controlled.

3. The resulting material is presented in the exhibition space, too. Due to the editing being done mechanically and not, as usual, electronically, the resulting audio-visions run counter to the conventions of „daily TV“. Images are upside down, playing backwards, sounds oversteer or image and sound layers are out of sync. The time delay between image and sound results from the position of the video head and the sound pick-up (see diagram). The form of the cut of the pictures are „analogue“ to the real cut in the tape but displaced by a 90 degree angle.