design / concept of specification list
In the 1960s television developed worldwide into a dominant mass media, whose opinion-forming power was sceptically faced by artists and theorists. The “one-way communication,” which forces viewers into a passive role was criticized above all. As late as 1978, the former Federal Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, called for a Sunday without television in order to free German television audiences from this passivity. Artists publicly took positions on the subject in radical art events.
In the 1960s television developed worldwide into a dominant mass media, whose opinion-forming power was sceptically faced by artists and theorists. The “one-way communication,” which forces viewers into a passive role was criticized above all. As late as 1978, the former Federal Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, called for a Sunday without television in order to free German television audiences from this passivity. Artists publicly took positions on the subject in radical art events. Wolf Vostell buried a television wound in barbed wire in New York (TV BURYING, 1963) and staged a ritual shooting of a running television in Wuppertal (NEUN NEIN-DE-COLL/AGEN, 1963). Joseph Beuys covered a screen of a television set with felt (FILZ TV, 1966). Nam June Paik intervened in the electronics of the device itself and let viewers actively take part in the design of the image at the same time (MAGNET TV, 1965; PARTICIPATION TV, 1963).
Beginning in the mid-1960s, artists, writers, composers and directors started to deal with the medium of television and to search for a new visual language and narrative means. One of the most keenly experimental phases began for German television. An abundance of new aesthetic possibilities emerged with the introduction of magnetic recording, the bluebox process and chroma keying techniques that were used by many directors. A new aesthetic vision appeared in popular culture, in advertising and in television movies. Using exemplary works by individual artists, the exhibition shows a cross-section of this epoch of German television history.
