BROADCAST

Dara Birnbaum | Chris Burden | Gregory Green | Doug Hall, Chip Lord & Jody Procter
Christian Jankowski | Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle | neurotransmitter | Antonio Muntadas
Nam June Paik | TVTV/Top Value Television | Siebren Versteeg

June 4 – August 7, 2010
USF Contemporary Art Museum

Broadcast explores the ways in which artists since the late 1960s have engaged, critiqued, and inserted themselves into official channels of broadcast television and radio. From TVTV’s iconoclastic television broadcast from the floor of the 1972 Republican convention to Gregory Green’s recent pirate radio station installations, these artists’ works have intervened into broadcasting systems as a means of examining or challenging the influence and power of TV and radio. At times the works in Broadcast are hostile, such as Chris Burden’s infamous 1972 hostagetaking of a TV host at knifepoint; at other times they are collaborative, such as Christian Jankowski’s 1999 project for the Venice Biennale, for which he repeatedly called in to psychics on live Venetian television. In still other instances artists critically reuse previously broadcast material: Dara Birnbaum appropriates media coverage of the 1977 kidnapping of German industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer by the Baader-Meinhof group, while Antoni Muntadas incorporates and studies cold war broadcasting conventions in cities worldwide.

By co-opting the sounds, images, and presentation strategies of our culture’s dominant forms of mass media, the works in Broadcast reveal the mechanisms and power structures of broadcasting systems, challenging their authority and influence. Whether borrowing its conventions or engaging in a live TV or radio broadcast themselves, the artists represented here compel us to look more closely at this force in our culture.

Broadcast is a traveling exhibition co-organized by the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, and iCI (Independent Curators International), New York, and circulated by iCI. The curator is Irene Hofmann, Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum. The exhibition is made possible, in part, with support from the iCI Exhibition Partners.

The Institute for Research in Art is recognized by the State of Florida as a major cultural institution and receives funding through the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The USF Contemporary Art Museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums.

PRESS
Art that uses the airwaves by Shana Johnson
USF ORACLE - June 7, 2010
Online Multimedia | Print Story

DOWNLOADS
Exhibition Brochure | Press Release

RELATED LINKS
Independent Curators International (ICI)
ICI's Broadcast exhibition page
The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore
Homebrew Broadcasting - Pirate Radio and TV Broadcasting Technique