Prueba de Infiltración de Doble Anillo

For Documenta 12 in 2007, Danish contemporary art magazine

Øjeblikket was one of a number magazines and art collectives who responded to the question: “What is to be done? (Education)”. As one of Øjeblikket’s invited responders within the magazine, tv-tv simply supplied the magazine with a “To Do List” filled up with the many tasks associated with the everyday administration and concerns of the TV-station. This list included requests for a clean- ing service, to rewrite the manifesto, to locate missing tripods, to be more present on the Internet, to bring out the trash, to write better program descriptions and for attending meetings with the local media associations (Øjeblikket, 2007).

The tv-tv To Do List exposed some of the structural as well as banal dilemmas of running a TV station collectively. The following section initially deals with the conditions of production of tv-tv based in observations as seen from mostly a practical, organisa- tional point of view. Following Latour’s terminology, I will deal

12 _{Here I’ve not discussed the different cultural contexts of the one example being set in the US, the}

other in Denmark. The next section will go more in-depth about the Danish public-service system in relation to more commercialised media markets.

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conventions of serialised TV production, tv-tv kept its initial struc- ture for at least three years.14

During this period, the Tuesday meeting was the organisational centre-point, where all the editorial groups active in tv-tv were en- couraged to participate.

Typically there were between 5-10 people showing up at the Tuesday meetings out of about 12 active editorial groups. Usually, most of the participants were also part of the steering group and shared different responsibilities in economic and technological is- sues, daily maintenance, introducing new members among other tasks. If one wanted to start producing at tv-tv, you had to show

14 _{When tv-tv in 2008 reformed it entailed the institution of a more formal board taking more re-}

sponsibility for the daily administration and supposedly allowing content producers more time for actually producing new programmes.

Picture 4.5. Snapshot from a tv-tv meeting in the Folkets Hus studio. Image: Kristoffer Gansing.

conventions of serialised TV production, tv-tv kept its initial struc- ture for at least three years.14

During this period, the Tuesday meeting was the organisational centre-point, where all the editorial groups active in tv-tv were en- couraged to participate.

Typically there were between 5-10 people showing up at the Tuesday meetings out of about 12 active editorial groups. Usually, most of the participants were also part of the steering group and shared different responsibilities in economic and technological is- sues, daily maintenance, introducing new members among other tasks. If one wanted to start producing at tv-tv, you had to show

14 _{When tv-tv in 2008 reformed it entailed the institution of a more formal board taking more re-}

sponsibility for the daily administration and supposedly allowing content producers more time for actually producing new programmes.

Picture 4.5. Snapshot from a tv-tv meeting in the Folkets Hus studio. Image: Kristoffer Gansing.

with these conditions both from the perspective of the “socio- gramm” and the “technogram” of production, (Latour, 1987; 1996) meaning that the organisation of people as well as of tech- nologies are taken into account. Further, these observations are connected to the content of actual tv-tv productions and activities as well as various projects that I’ve personally been involved in. The timeframe for the observations and interventions into tv-tv is April 2006 – November 2009, with the observation part mostly concerning the period leading up to late 2007 and the interven- tion part mostly situated in the latter half of the timeframe. Taken to-gether, these observations and discussions set the stage for the final TV-Hacknight intervention and form the basis for a conclu- ding discussion of tv-tv and its possibilities as a platform enacting institutional critique across old and new media forms and modes of production in a networked culture context.

The Tuesday Meeting and its Discontents

In the tv-tv working structure, a weekly “Tuesday” meeting formed the basis of all administrative as well as editorial work. The tv-tv scenario of organisational downscaling through distributing its pro- duction into independent editorial groups was always the ideal of the original project group although not realised in any consistently functional way. These meetings tended always to become bogged down by administrative tasks of the “to do list” kind and very seldom there seemed to be time left for discussing actual productions or projects. Interestingly enough, the TV-Stop producers also started with a similar decentralised working structure but eventually found it to be unsustainable due to administrative reasons. This meant that TV-Stop re-organised into a more hierarchical model with a steering board delegating tasks to clearly defined work-groups of both administrative and content-producing nature (Henriksen and Mazanti, 1997). In line with the tv-tv wish to work with both col- lective, dehierarchised and networked modes of production, going against the conventions of serialised TV production, tv-tv kept its initial structure for at least three years.14

conventions of serialised TV production, tv-tv kept its initial struc- ture for at least three years.14

During this period, the Tuesday meeting was the organisational centre-point, where all the editorial groups active in tv-tv were en- couraged to participate.

Typically there were between 5-10 people showing up at the Tuesday meetings out of about 12 active editorial groups. Usually, most of the participants were also part of the steering group and shared different responsibilities in economic and technological is- sues, daily maintenance, introducing new members among other tasks. If one wanted to start producing at tv-tv, you had to show

14 _{When tv-tv in 2008 reformed it entailed the institution of a more formal board taking more re-}

sponsibility for the daily administration and supposedly allowing content producers more time for actually producing new programmes.

Picture 4.5. Snapshot from a tv-tv meeting in the Folkets Hus studio. Image: Kristoffer Gansing.

153

conventions of serialised TV production, tv-tv kept its initial struc- ture for at least three years.14

During this period, the Tuesday meeting was the organisational centre-point, where all the editorial groups active in tv-tv were en- couraged to participate.

Typically there were between 5-10 people showing up at the Tuesday meetings out of about 12 active editorial groups. Usually, most of the participants were also part of the steering group and shared different responsibilities in economic and technological is- sues, daily maintenance, introducing new members among other tasks. If one wanted to start producing at tv-tv, you had to show

14 _{When tv-tv in 2008 reformed it entailed the institution of a more formal board taking more re-}

sponsibility for the daily administration and supposedly allowing content producers more time for actually producing new programmes.

Picture 4.5. Snapshot from a tv-tv meeting in the Folkets Hus studio. Image: Kristoffer Gansing.

conventions of serialised TV production, tv-tv kept its initial struc- ture for at least three years.14

During this period, the Tuesday meeting was the organisational centre-point, where all the editorial groups active in tv-tv were en- couraged to participate.

Typically there were between 5-10 people showing up at the Tuesday meetings out of about 12 active editorial groups. Usually, most of the participants were also part of the steering group and shared different responsibilities in economic and technological is- sues, daily maintenance, introducing new members among other tasks. If one wanted to start producing at tv-tv, you had to show

14 _{When tv-tv in 2008 reformed it entailed the institution of a more formal board taking more re-}

sponsibility for the daily administration and supposedly allowing content producers more time for actually producing new programmes.

Picture 4.5. Snapshot from a tv-tv meeting in the Folkets Hus studio. Image: Kristoffer Gansing.

conventions of serialised TV production, tv-tv kept its initial struc- ture for at least three years.14

During this period, the Tuesday meeting was the organisational centre-point, where all the editorial groups active in tv-tv were en- couraged to participate.

Typically there were between 5-10 people showing up at the Tuesday meetings out of about 12 active editorial groups. Usually, most of the participants were also part of the steering group and shared different responsibilities in economic and technological is- sues, daily maintenance, introducing new members among other tasks. If one wanted to start producing at tv-tv, you had to show

14 _{When tv-tv in 2008 reformed it entailed the institution of a more formal board taking more re-}

sponsibility for the daily administration and supposedly allowing content producers more time for actually producing new programmes.

Picture 4.5. Snapshot from a tv-tv meeting in the Folkets Hus studio. Image: Kristoffer Gansing.

During this period, the Tuesday meeting was the organisational centre-point, where all the editorial groups active in tv-tv were encouraged to participate.

Typically there were between 5-10 people showing up at the Tuesday meetings out of about 12 active editorial groups. Usually, most of the participants were also part of the steering group and shared different responsibilities in economic and technological issues, daily maintenance, introducing new members among other tasks. If one wanted to start producing at tv-tv, you had to show

up at one of the Tuesday meetings and propose a new editorial group. The meetings took the decisions about the daily administra- tion and all minutes were put on a tv-tv wiki15 _{where it was also} possible to in advance list the things one wanted to bring up on the meeting. Each meeting lasted around two hours and was almost always held at a large round table in the tv-tv studio in the tv-tv premises at Folkets Hus. This table became a symbolic placeholder for the daily administration, as one member of the group stated, the feeling was that this round table “is tv-tv”, even saying that without this daily administration taking place at the Tuesday meet- ings, tv-tv would surely fall apart.

A common issue at the Tuesday meetings was the question of how to deal with new tv-tv producers, both in terms of how to bring more people in and how to deal with the incoming requests. Typically, the station would get an e-mail from someone who had responded to the tv-tv website and manifesto with its statement that everyone can make TV. But at the Tuesday meetings, the limi- tations inherent to any such counter-public project, the “con- straints of circulation” to speak with Warner, specific to tv-tv, also became apparent. Not all people who turned to tv-tv with the wish to produce programs necessarily adhered to the same principles of artistic self-reflection and medium criticality stated in the manifesto and as, at least ideally, practised by the core group. The philosophy was that no-one should be turned down and that all newcomers should be given a chance to screen their programmes but this was to be proved difficult in practice due to the contextual constraints connected to being an artist-run television station.

If we consider this problematic of bringing new producers and the “everyone can make tv” statement, we can observe at least four different scenarios of people contacting tv-tv on a regular basis. The most common scenario involved someone who wanted to broadcast an already finished programme. Next to this group came people who, as aspiring or low-budget filmmakers were mostly looking for a place to borrow free equipment and editing facilities. A third group were groups or individuals looking for media cover-

age of an event or political action such as a demonstration, thus approaching tv-tv as a left-wing advocacy media. The fourth, most rare group, consisted of those who wished to establish a new edito- rial group and start producing programmes for tv-tv, in the ideal case also according to its manifesto of critical counter-public sphere or artistic television. One could then start differentiating be- tween different kinds of levels of engagement and expectations but this is the basic structure that I observed regarding the nature of the incoming external requests. From an administrative point of view, the first group may look unproblematic on the surface but considering that tv-tv worked with a decentralised structure of in- dependent editorial groups and that there was no single responsible programmer, decisions on what to air were not that easy to take. It seems that the resolution was to deal with these requests in an ad- hoc manner, sometimes based on individual decisions and some- times based on the democratic decision structure of the Tuesday meetings. One might say that real responsibility taking for this is- sue remained undefined, but at the same time highly flexible.

An example of the challenges of the first category, of people ap- proaching tv-tv with their already finished program, involved the issue of intellectual property: a group of art students from the art Academy of Funen produced a series of programmes appropriating the news from the Danish National Television, the public service channel DR. At the first Tuesday meeting where they showed up, it was still unclear if intellectual property laws would be broken by transmitting this program and it was collectively decided that the students must clear this issue before transmission. However, some months later one of the tv-tv editorial groups wished to screen a Swedish documentary about the crackdown on the infamous file- sharing service The Pirate Bay. The film, called Steal This Film con- tains a large amount of footage from Hollywood blockbusters and transmitting it would obviously be violating copyright laws. A mail is sent out to the tv-tv members asking if they think it is ok to go ahead with the screening anyway. There is only one response (from myself, a supportive one) and the film is screened some days later. Behind this inconsistency is actually a local-global context. The

who were close at home. The DR programme could have been risky for tv-tv to transmit as the station had actually got in trouble with DR previously, in its very first transmission.

The background to the incident above was the “DR Rund- visning” program consisting of tv-tv visiting DR, playing the role of “TV tourists”. In the programme, members of the steering group of tv-tv has simply booked and paid for the regular tour of the DR main building, offered by the broadcasting organisation to groups and companies as a kind of combined PR and side-business. Of course, little did the DR tour administration know that the group to be guided around the different studio sets of at the time popular Danish crime series such as Örnen, were in fact belonging a small local station who would later broadcast their ironic turning of their own cameras on the big media. In this program, tv-tv were literally inserting themselves as a virus into the mainstream in a way that would prove too much for its infected host. After all, tv- tv were artistically appropriating the content of the DR tour but this was not recognised by the public institution who immediately after the transmission threatened tv-tv with a law-suit for copyright infringement.16 _{Behind the denial to screen the program of the art} students’ appropriation of DR news footage there lay, in other words, a pragmatic decision deriving from the local media political context, while the Steal This Film more easily conformed to the video art strategy of mocking global mainstream media content without any major local player likely to interfere. This indicates an inconsistency in tv-tv’s production strategies arising out of the lo- cal-global differentiated scales of the politics of media production in network culture.

An example from the third group of incoming requests concerned an activist group that wanted tv-tv to cover a demonstration they were organising. This approaching of tv-tv as a political news me- dium giving room to left wing groups and alternative culture stems

16 _{The argument being that tv-tv was exposing the tour and thus the content of the proprietary prod-}

uct of the tour itself. Hamou (2008): “They meant that we had revealed their ‘property’, as that tour costs a thousand bucks, and there we are simply exposing it. So, they demanded a public excuse and that was a jackpot for us. On our web-page it now said ‘Apologies to DR for having shown...’. Nothing happened but we later heard that the employees at DR had received a memo saying that they should ignore this statement... We kept displaying it for a quite long time.”

from the fact that it was connected to the history of the activist channel TV-Stop. Dealing with this heritage was ambivalent for tv- tv. Some people at the station worked under the conviction that there was an informal contract to continue to cater to some of the target groups of TV-Stop. It was clear however that the way of pro- ducing TV had changed, both because of tv-tv as an artistic project and as a consequence of a more fragmented media-landscape, and therefore to some extent also due to a change in its underlying poli- tics. While TV-Stop preferred all their new participants to undergo a rigorous training program of preferably 6-months according to the highly specialised functions of TV Production (Henriksen and Mazanti, 1997), tv-tv operated under a “become the media” ethos in a slightly more anarchistic manner, stemming from DIY art prac- tices and Internet culture. Instead of working, as TV-Stop did, with very heavy TV-camera set-ups in the studio, tv-tv scaled down to small portable cameras and the same scaling down applied to edit- ing and other technical equipment.

We were introduced to the TV-Stop way of doing things, they were very much occupied with explaining how they did it. It probably corresponded to how they made TV at DR in the 1990’s. We had already realised that we couldn’t make TV in this way. We were not a coherent group with an interest in working in that mode. I think it was clear to us early on that we would decentralise and not go on working in that hierarchic manner. To