TV Fighter (Cam Era Plane)

Description

"TV Fighter (Cam Era Plane) attempts to decode the illusion/narrative convention as an intrinsic condition of the work." (David Hall) (Source, website, Rewind)

Additional Informations

"TV Fighter is undoubtedly one of the few classics of British video art (Hall's This is a Television Receiver is another). Not only does it merge the two distinct directions of the 1970s video art movement - an exploration of the properties of video as a mechanical mode of representation, and a confrontation with the illusionism of broadcast television - but it has a simplicity, economy and energy as rare then as it is today. Hall takes the point-of-view shot in its most dramatic and visceral form, by using archive war footage of a fighter plane strafing a railway train and a ship at sea. (...) First, we see the footage as we would in a television documentary, quite normally. Then we see a screen on which the same sequence is being played as Hall's camera shoots (the identification of camera with gun is suggested throughout) a monitor showing the footage. An immediate and common illusion (but a perfectly illogical one) is that this image shows the monitor at the moment we are watching it . (...) There is also an implied difference between kinds of "time", which in this case is more complex and only partly illusory: that is, between the historical time of the war footage (...) and the time of the shooting of the monitor, which is akin to time present. (...) Hall at this point moves the camera to mimic the fighter plane approaching its target; the sound from the monitor in shot now becomes attached (a further illusion) to the moving camera and not the airplane represented (...). As the sound of the aeroplane engine rises and the staccato of gunfire is heard, the camera swoops in on the monitor. A further illusion is one concerning movement; the monitor gives the appearance of moving, although we can infer from our knowledge of the medium that this effect is achieved through the movement of the camera itself. (...) We are then presented with the image of a monitor, with gun sights, showing on its screen a moving monitor with gun sights over the image of the fighter-plane sequence. And finally, the camera moves so that it swoops and dives on the monitor showing the swooping and diving monitor. The means of linguistic description reach their limits here. (...) An astonishing tour de force, TV Fighter has a confidence and élan which makes it highly watchable, even if one is not quite sure of the conceptual implications." (Michael O'Pray, TV Fighter (Cam Era Plane) review, BFI Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1988.) (Source, pdf, Rewind)

Video still from TV Fighter (Cam Era Plane). (Source, website, Rewind)

Elusive Sign (British Avant-Garde Film & Video) Touring Schedule April 1988. (Source, pdf, Rewind)

Art for Boxes - Video and the Institution, talk by Mick Hartney at The Tate Gallery, October 1982. Includes a screening of David Hall's TV Fighter (Cam Era Plane). (Source, pdf, Rewind)

Leaflet for The Arnolfini video library, Bristol, 1982. (Source, pdf, Rewind)

View the work on Vimeo

Presentation place

- Art for Boxes - Video and the Institution, The Tate Gallery, 9 octobre 1982. (Source, pdf, site web Rewind) - Subverting Television. Deconstruct (A Three Part Programme of British Video Art), sélectionné par Marc Wilcox pour Netherlands Video Circuit, Arts Council Film and Video Umbrella Programme; Time Based Arts, Amsterdam, mars 1985. (Source, pdf, site web Rewind) - Video Art 78, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Jordan Well, Coventry, 6 - 21 mai 1978. (Source, pdf, site web Rewind)

Publications and Periodicals which reference the work

- Video Art 78, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Jordan Well, Coventry, 1978. (Source, pdf, Rewind)

- Mark Wilcox, "Deconstruct", Subverting Television. Deconstruct, Scratch, Alter Image, Arts Council Film and Video Umbrella Programme, 1984; Time Based Arts, Amsterdam, March 1985. (Source, pdf, Rewind)

- Michael O'Pray, TV Fighter (Cam Era Plane) review, BFI Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1988. (Source 1, Souce 2, pdf, Rewind)

- David Curtis (ed.), The Ellusive Sign: British Avant-garde Film and Video 1977-1987, Arts Council of Great Britain ; British Council, London, [1988?].

- Stephen Partridge & Sean Cubitt (eds.), REWIND| British Artists' Video in the 1970s & 1980s, John Libbey Publishing, East barnet, Herts, 2012.

- Graham Wade, "A Look at British Video Art", [s.n.], [s.l.], [s.d.]. (Source, pdf, Rewind)