INPUT / … / … / TV art on art

What is it in the nature of the program-maker’s attraction to his subject that leads to such a variety of stylistic challenges and solutions? The authors of these programs have chosen to present other artists, their work and their relationship to society, thus creating new works of art using the tools of television. In each of the three pieces, the program-makers have an obviously strong attraction to their subjects. Each work represents a variety of stylistic ideas. In LOOK, JONATHAN, the work of the militant Belgian playwright Jean Louvet is novelly treated through a mixture of excerpts from his theater pieces, solo readings, contemporary images of the industrial landscape central to his work, newsreels of striking steel workers (Louvet’s protagonists) and interviews with the man himself. Huguette Spengler has dedicated herself to the art of living in Paris; the program –maker deals with Huguette Spengler’s stories and childhood memories of Russia are interwoven with sometimes moving and amusing interviews. Cemented by unusual graphic design and special effects, the piece becomes a work of art in its own right. In RUSSIAN ARTIST EXPERIMENT, key figures in the futuristic arts movement from the period around the October Revolution “meet” in this performance piece: a series of blackouts created for television. Everybody who is anybody in the arts is there: Maiakovski, Malevich, Sokolov, Tatlin, Arianova... to be examined, exposed and exorcised.