Fuer die Meisterkabine praesentiert OURTV ein Videoprogramm.

Das Program zeigt Kuenstlervideos; die Struktur orientiert sich an der des Fernsehens.

Also ein idealistischer Entwurf fuer ein Fernsehen. Durch das was uns interessiert und das was wir lieben machen wir das was wir kennen zu dem was wir gerne haetten.

ourtv

Series 1

The first in a series of programmes looking at how the ‘individual' forms the masses and how one takes what is given but works to operate within and without it. ‘Series 1’ starts with the premise that general and specific interests are formed through genuine love and interest. Like TV - but what if...... Taking the form of a programmed video reel ‘Series 1’ will be broadcast in the guest space of Lothringer 13, Munich, for one week, from the 15th December 2009. The majority of the reel for Munich has been selected, however some works have been made specifically for ‘Series 1’.

Welcome to ourtv, a television channel dedicated to showing artists’ films. This evening’s programme is brought to you in conjunction with Lothringer 13 and is a suggested sequence of  programming for broadcast, or one hour in the life of ourtv.

Many images are now experienced without a physical form, jpg, mpeg etc. and perhaps the internet has reduced the importance of physical, plastic or analogue broadcast media like television. But what has this done to our relationship with this imagery? The selection process of what is seen and how we see it has become less visible, increased access for a larger audience has seen a reduction in quality, a reduction in content and a reduction in value.

If the value of art is in its rarity, how does this affect an artist’s film? Film exists for an audience, so how can a film reach an audience and still retain its value? Or is this value in its content, or in its physical or aesthetic form? ourtv would like to make artists’ film and video available to a wider audience but with that physical one-to-one relationship which reflects the integrity of the work itself. In the spirit of cable access, or Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party, avoiding the uneasy gallery experience without the bits and pixels.  This is not to take a stance against the internet, but rather, an examination into what this now means for the development of an ‘underground’.  Can such a thing exist in a world were it seems anything can be underground one day, and commercial pop the next?

The films for series one were chosen for their engagement with this concept of 'underground' or because they could be considered to be 'underground' in some sense.  And while each was made by an individual (or individual group) based on their own experience of the world, and that experience is therefore individual, each adopts a similar starting point, using the world as a bank of information and finding where they are or what they see in it.   Stephen Sutcliffe, for example, uses an archive of imagery predominantly sourced from the mass media, TV, Radio, Newspapers,  collaging and suggesting new readings of experience and interpretation.  Chris Clarke’s film ‘Amateur’  takes a more direct approach, questioning the accepted position of the consumer through the literal and physical context, the necessity, of specific hardware.  Music often plays an influential role in the formation of an 'underground,' particularly when combined with the changing face of fashion, as made visible in Mark Leckey’s ‘Foirucci Made Me Hardcore,' and music plays an integral part in the collaging effect employed by the collaborative group Elizabeth Go, where a variation of experience and interpretation is made literal this time by the contrast between turbulent music and sedate imagery.

Programme for Munich (continuous loop 1hr approx.) :-

* ourtv Ants; 1min. 29sec.

Ident ants carrying leaves. Work ethic/the world is a diverse and interesting place/ experience it on TV/ like everybody/ at the same place at the same time millions of American families sit down to…

* Stina Wirfelt Oasis; 3min.

Oasis shows a condition rather than an event. The dinner is in Sweden, but beyond the written signage there is little to place this.  The mix of cultural references place in it anywhere or nowhere.  This film is enhanced by the overlay of sounds effects, some ambient but some more distinctive, for example Sean Paul’s dancehall soundtrack.

*  Chris Clarke; Amateur; 11min.

The film depicts the upgrade of the hardrive of a Macbook Pro, the meticulous nature of the filming parallels the precision of the act being performed.  Mimicking the procedure of human operations, but also the fetishisation of technology.  The act of opening up this mass-produced device to change it and make it more efficient for this one specific user depicting the hacker as a silent hero taking what is given and making it better. This Film has been shot in super 8 film, transferred to digital and played from the removed hardrive.

*  Stephen Sutcliffe; Come to the Edge; 1min. 30 sec.

Come to the Edge uses a recording of the poet Christopher Logue reciting a poem originally written in 1968:

Come to the edge.

We might fall.

Come to the edge.

It’s too high!

COME TO THE EDGE!

And they came,

And we pushed,

And they flew.

The poem is combined with video footage shot in a 6th form common room. In the footage a group of schoolboys humiliate an older boy.  Sutcliffe’s work is collaged using material from his large video/audio/image archive.

*  Anna McCarthy; TV out of the window at 60mph; 1min. 30 sec.

A TV is repeatedly thrown out of a car window.  Filmed in VHS.

*  Elizabeth Go (Victoria Morton, Cathy Wilkes, Sue and Hayley Tompkins) ;          ;1min. 58sec.

Repeating scenes of a woman (different women) in a room (different rooms).  Shot in super 8 with a separate sound track of repeating crashing cymbals and drums.

*  ourtv; Glacier; 1min.

The second ident, this time the movement and landscape of ice.

*  Luke Fowler; Anna; 3min.

A super 8-film part of the 3-minute wonders series, original made for channel 4.  Looking around the flat of the people living in the same building as him.

*  Lila De Magalhaes Frank; 2min 13 sec.

Filmed in the McClellan Galleries in Glasgow, creating  an operatic setting for this lone figure to parade around, while an omnipresent voice tries to control the situation.

*  ourtv; Fiona-my-middle-name; 2min. 10 sec

The third Ident, is human.

*  Mark Leckey; Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore; 15min.

A video essay using found footage from the 70s, 80s and 90s,  music scenes in the U.K.

*  Hank Schmidt i.d. Beek; Hessenschau; 2min. 42sec.

*  Anna Witt; Domesticated; 5min.

*Jamie Stevens; Too Unlimited; 2min.

A two-minute text on film over three stages. First, BBC Newsnight review, 1999. Second, Jandek plays in a Belfast shopping centre. Third, some appropriated film of theanyspacewhatever exhibition at The Guggenheim. 

ourtv’s Website http://ourtv.net16.net/

Blog for events happening in Munich http://grossemalereiausstellung.blogspot.com/

Gallery’s Website http://lothringer-dreizehn.com/aktuell/index.html

ourtv is a Manuela Gernedel and Morag Keil project