Television (an Address)

Abstract

Television (an address) is a text that stems from an art project initiated in 2002. The project is based on an operation that relies on the live transmission of the image of television. The streamed image is accompanied by a commentary given by an invited guest to different audiences in theatres and galleries around the world. This paradoxical transmission of a transmission seeks to create a disjunction that positions the image in a place where it can speak about itself. The text is intended to highlight a general platform of thought surrounding the status of the image in contemporary culture. The general argument is linked to the notion of the ‘death’ of cinema in the hands of television, as the latter relinquished its ethical/aesthetical function, positioning itself instead in the realm of a purely social function. The writing is a non-academic approximation on the part of an artist and writer. It draws on notions worked by Giorgio Agamben around the Messianic dimension of cinema and also Deleuze’s diagnosis of a society of control.