Critical Writing Index

European Television Archives, Collective Memories, And Contemporary Art

by Maeve Connolly

The Velvet Light Trap, Spring 2013, v. 71, pp. 47-58

This article discusses three moving image artworks produced since 2009, by Finnish artist Laure Horelli, Serbian artist Bojan Fajfric, and Slovenian artist Aleksandra Domanovic, featuring material from television archives in Finland or the countries of Former Yugoslavia. These artworks include fragments of educational programs, coverage of political meetings and title sequences for evening news programs, broadcast during the 1980s or early 1990s. All three artists focus on familial and national connections to the archived material, and use practices of re-editing, re-enacting, and re-mixing to situate television in relation to other technologies of media storage and retrieval. As these three artworks focus on failures, absences and gaps in television memory, they offer a counterpoint to the notions of collectivity often emphasized in theorisations of the media event (Dayan and Katz, 1992). The articel also considers the of Fajfric, Horelli, and Domanovic in relation to a broader interest in television history and archives, evident amongst contemporary artists and curators sinde the mid-2000s.

ITEM 2013.004 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Haukka-Pala (2009)Laura Horelli

Theta Rhythm (2010)Bojan Fajfric

19:30 (2010-ongoing)Aleksandra Domanovic

The Eternal Frame (1975)T.R Uthco

The Eternal Frame (1975)Ant Farm

Videograms of a Revolution (1992)Harun Farocki

Videograms of a Revolution (1992)Andrei Ujica

Family History (2006)Gillian Wearing