Saint Jean Port Joli à Melbourne

http://www.videospread.com/news/fed-square

Videospread in Melbourne, Australia.
Videospread is pleased to present the programme «Borderline» at Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia, between 28th February and 28th May 2008.The screenings will take place on the big screens at Fed Square and in the Atrium.
This series of screenings are in the lead of the 2008 Urban Screens conference taking place in October at Federation Square, about "discovering the potential of outdoor screens for urban society". This event is initiated by Mirjam Struppek, founder of Urban Screens in 2005*.

For further details on the screening schedule, please visit Federation Square’s web site at:

http://www.federationsquare.com (section: Fed Square Programs)


Borderline

The postwar years in America saw the emergence of television sets in neighbourhood taverns, and with that, an opening to the rest of the world for a majority of the urban masculine working class. Immigrants had the possibility to connect with their homeland and sports events were an opportunity of sharing national identity.

Commercial discourse rapidly prevailed and content was defined in connexion to the audience’s location. Inside the home, touching a majority of women, the television set broadcasted films and advertising. At the tavern, offering a privileged arena for sports spectatorship, content was targeted towards entertainment, beer and other beverage consumption.

This social and economical reality was the starting point for the production and commercialization of an ever growing quantity of television shows on travel, cooking, cinema, news …

Early on, artists made use of this visual information as part of their artwork as quotes, references or direct reproductions of these images, scenarios and sets, thus blurring the boundaries between reality and virtuality.

This image manipulation, transformation, which inevitably provokes a modification in meaning and reception, and its « subversive » introduction in public space addresses the legitimacy and commercial logic which run broadcasting networks – television, advertising networks in public space – and questions the possibilities of opening this « exhibition » space to a larger, non-commercial, content and the impact of such a content on the general viewing public.

Borderline is a stroll through a world on the breech of virtuality, playing with our knowledge of televisual reality – sports event, documentary, live show, investigation report – and questions our relationship to a traditional television programme and particularly the satisfaction obtained by viewing such programmes.

The artworks of Renaud-Auguste Dormeuil, Agathe Lievens, Marcus Kreiss, Pia Lindman, Amelia Seymour, Sylvie Ungauer and Virginie Yassef play with our goodwill and patience by pushing farther the limits of our familiar and reassuring visual culture.


* URBAN SCREENS is a concept developed by Mirjam Struppek. It investigates how the currently commercial use of outdoor screens can be broadened with cultural content. It addresses cultural fields as digital media culture, urbanism, architecture and art.