| art.description.project | Constructed as a televised documentary performance and talk show, Television Without Frontiers investigates political imaginaries of Europe and the role of television and public service as tools to establish “common ground”.
The work is inspired by the project “Eurikon”, an international collaboration initiated by the European Broadcast Union in 1982 in an attempt to build a “common ground” for the future (and present) European community. The experiment involved public services from nearly 15 countries from Western Europe and North Africa, as well as a large array of journalists, cameramen and an army of interpreters engaged in simultaneous multi-language translation of live broadcasts.
Today, more than three decades later, Europe seems heading towards nationalist fragmentation rather than searching for “common ground”. Television Without Frontiers brings together a number of TV and media personalities from across Europe and beyond. In an exhilarating atmosphere shifting between the past and the present, reality and imagination, and full of unexpected turns, they debate on how “Eurikon” might be used as a model to reflect on what happened to the visions of a post-national community. What role can the TV and public service play in today’s fast-changing media landscape, and what alternatives are there to the market and the nation in building “common ground”?
In the fight for attention driving today’s economy of affect, Television Without Frontiers challenges the viewer to engage with a multi-language conversation intertwined with translators’ voices, parables told by an ice-cream vendor, live hypnotic acts, and a gigantic inflatable turtle that takes off to a flight through the TV studio.
With the participation of: Sylvie Caspar, Jacek Poniedziałek, Sylvana Simons, Ahmed El-Ghandour, Ash Sarkar, Klaas Jan Hindriks, Yankho Kamwendo, Jonathan Royle, Lucas Carlsson, Marta Oldenburg, Louise Bjurholm, Kjell Wilhelmsen, Mattias Bylund, Per Strandberg, Michael Engström, Miko Rezler, Per-Magnus Heinemann, Yasmina Kebaier-Dombrovicki, Cecilia Klintebäck, Artur Sedlar, Anne Verbeke. | sv |
