The Situation Envisaged

Description

"Eight domestic TV receivers are placed side by side at eye level on a wall-to-wall support in a quarter-circle across the corner of a room. Each is facing into the enclosed space and away from the viewer, and each is tuned to a different TV channel from the next.The viewer hears a cacophany of sound, and sees only an ever-changing projected glow beyond and above the line of TV sets. On approaching the installation, the screen of a video monitor is glimpsed through a small gap between each alternate set. It is playing a videotape, the content of which is difficult to decipher since the gap restricts the visual field to a narrow vertical section of the screen. The four possible viewpoints each offer a different segment -suggesting the assembly of coherent information only as the viewer moves from viewpoint to viewpoint. In doing so the tape time continuum is broken - expectations of a narrative progression are both implied and rejected - sometimes phasing by coincidence with the movement of the viewer, sometimes not. Fragments seen are of private ritual.. The work confronts issues of power and the individual; the public and the private; the viewer and the viewed..." David Hall, 1978. (Source 1 [expired], website, Rewind, Source 2, pdf, Rewind)

Additional Informations

Brochure/program for the Video Installation Show 1983 Air Gallery, includes the work The Situation Envisaged. (Source, pdf, Rewind website)

"Requirements: 8 identical TV sets, 1 monitor, 1 U-matic cassette or DVD player, custom-built curved plinth." (Source, quoted from the Rewind website)

Plan drawing The Situation Envisaged, video installation. (Source, Rewind website)

Photograph of The Situation Envisaged, video installation. (Source, Rewind website)

Presentation place

- Video Art 78, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Jordan Well, Coventry, 6 - 21 mai 1978. (Source, pdf, site web Rewind) - Video Installation Show, Air Gallery, Londres, 11 - 29 janvier 1983. (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)

- Bettina Gruber & Maria Vedder, Kunst und Video, Dumont Buchverlag, Köln, 1983. (Source, pdf, Rewind)

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

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