ICI Independent Curators International
Dara Birnbaum
Chris Burden
Gregory Green
Doug Hall
Chip Lord
Jody Procter
Christian Jankowski
Inigo Manglano-Ovalle
Antoni Muntadas
neuroTransmitter
Nam June Paik
TVTV
Top Value Television
Siebren Versteeg
Irene Hofmann
The exhibition explores the ways in which artists since the late 1960s have engaged with, critiqued, and inserted themselves into official channels of broadcast television and radio. By co-opting the sounds, images, and presentation strategies of our culture's dominant forms of mass media, they reveal the mechanisms and power structures of broadcasting systems, and challenge their authority and influence. On show Dara Birnbaum, Chris Burden, Gregory Green, Doug Hall and many others.
Curated by Irene Hofmann
The artists: Dara Birnbaum, Chris Burden, Gregory Green, Doug Hall, Chip Lord and Jody Procter, Christian Jankowski, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, neuroTransmitter, Antonio Muntadas, Nam June Paik, TVTV/Top Value Television, Siebren Versteeg
Hamilton, N.Y. Broadcast is an exhibition that explores the ways in which artists since the
late 1960s have engaged, critiqued, and inserted themselves into official channels of
broadcast television and radio. This is the first exhibition of its kind to explore this engaging
subject and to examine this provocative body of work. The exhibition will be on view at the
Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University from February 2 through March 12, 2010.
The exhibition features thirteen works by an international group of artists, including single-
channel monitor-based videos, video-projection works, photography, installations, and
interactive broadcasting projects. Ranging in date from 1966 to 2007, the works in the
exhibition make use of one of two strategies: broadcasting and re-broadcasting. The former
refers to works that involve an artist intervening into existing broadcasts or broadcasting
channels by participating in a live broadcast (either as an invited or uninvited participant) or
by creating a broadcast. The latter features the use or manipulation of previously existing
TV or radio material. Within each of these strategies, there are two impulses followed by the
artists – either an iconoclastic, aggressive position, at times intended to question FCC
regulations, or a more cooperative and collaborative position on the other.
Highlights from the exhibition include:
In a hostile intervention, Chris Burden’s TV Hijack, (1972) was his response to a TV station’s
repeated rejection of his proposals for TV programming ideas, and was a challenge to what
Burden viewed as the control television has on our lives. During a live broadcast on Channel
3 Cablevision in Irvine, California, on February 9, 1972, Burden took his interviewer Phyllis
Lutjeans hostage with a small knife held to her throat and threatened her life if the station
stopped the live transmission of the incident. At the end of the recording the artist
destroyed the tapes of the interview.
Christian Jankowski’s video work, Telemistica, (1999) which was the first shown at the 1999
Venice Biennale, features footage from live broadcasts of psychics on local Venetian
television stations. Jankowski called a number of these popular shows and posed questions
to the psychics and astrologers about how his work would be received at the Biennale.
Some of Jankowski’s questions include: “What will the public think about my work?” “Will
they like it?” “Will I be successful?”
12 Miles Out, (2005) by the artist group neuroTransmitter, explores the practice of offshore
pirate radio prevalent in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, and in the US a decade later.
Merging analog radio technology with line drawing, this visual and sound installation uses
ambient sound and archival audio material broadcast from a transmitter incorporated into
the represenational drawing of the 1964 host ship of Radio Caroline, one of the most
infamous radio ships that occupied international waters off the coast of Great Britain.
Accompanied by a brochure and cell phone audio tour, the exhibition is curated by Irene Hofmann
executive director of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. An opening reception wil be held on
Monday, February 1, 5-7 pm with a gallery talk with the curator at 6 pm.
Broadcast is co-organized by iCI, (Independent Curators International), New York, and the Contemporary
Museum, Baltimore, and circulated by iCI. The guest curator is Irene Hofmann. The exhibition and tour
are made possible, in part, with support from the iCI Exhibition Partners.
Image: Chris Burden, TV Hijack, February 9, 1972
Opening: february 1, 2010 from 5 to 7pm
Picker Art Gallery - Charles A. Dana Arts Center
Lally Lane (Colgate University Campus) - Hamilton NY
The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday 1 to5 p.m