Satellite

Marvelous Movie Mondays: Stairway to Stardom

EPFC | March 31st, 2020

MARVELOUS MOVIE MONDAYS!!
guest curator: Cristina Kolozsváry-Kiss

Theme: Where’s Wayne’s World? A brief dive into the disappearing world of democratic and non-commercial television made possible by public access.

Finally, my favorite video on the internet. Stairway to Stardom was a public access show which aired in New York from 1979 to the early 90s. Credited as a precursor to Star Search and American Idol, it served the local neighborhoods and gave anyone and everyone a platform to showcase their talent. I implore you to leave your irony at the door and consider the remarkable talent required to be brave enough to go on TV to broadcast your private passions, and playful enough to smile when you don’t get it quite right. There are superstars amongst us, and they show it in the smallest acts of kindness, the plain-sight artistry of everyday life and the humility required to be a part of a community. Let’s all try to inject a little Michael Daniel Baez into this crazy period we’re living through and love a song so much we have to sing aloud, to take pleasure in our voices and sing together in harmony (even if it’s a little off-key). Stay safe, everyone. <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRpV17JQTIk
#marvelousmoviemondays

Marvelous Movie Mondays: The Live! Show

EPFC | March 26th, 2020

MARVELOUS MOVIE MONDAYS!!
guest curator: Cristina Kolozsváry-Kiss

Theme: Where’s Wayne’s World? A brief dive into the disappearing world of democratic and non-commercial television made possible by public access.

Well, one day late but still good. Please forgive my tardiness, I was detained by a mild fever and a severe panic. As we all lockdown in our homes, we are streaming more than ever. Netflix is curbing the quality it streams videos across Europe to ease the sudden burden on the internet providers. What better time to reflect on the nature of Television than when we are fully immersed and more embedded in TV reality than our own?
Enter Jaime Davidovich, an Argentinian-American performance artist and public access television pioneer. From Wikipedia: “The Live! Show, a weekly public-access television program with a variety show format that appropriated the formal norms of television along with avant-garde performances, artwork, political satire, and social commentary. The program featured interviews and performance work by visiting artists, including Laurie Anderson, Eric Bogosian, Tony Oursler, and Michael Smith, along with musical performances, ersatz commercials, and viewer participation via live call-in segments. Presiding over the show’s disparate collaborative elements was Davidovich’s own satirical character, ‘Dr. Videovich, specialist in curing television addiction,’ whom the New York Times’ television critic John J. O’Connor described as ‘a persona somewhere between Bela Lugosi and Andy Kaufman.'” An early deconstruction of television and its role in the culture industry through the medium itself, below you will find a link to a clip from an episode, and after that a little doc about the man, the myth and the legendary show that is now pretty hard to track down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDA7ZCZ2mEw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZKURQ0sZ6o

Marvelous Movie Mondays: Libra

EPFC | March 16th, 2020

MARVELOUS MOVIE MONDAYS!!
guest curator: Cristina Kolozsváry-Kiss

Theme: Where’s Wayne’s World? A brief dive into the disappearing world of democratic and non-commercial television made possible by public access.

I think today it is best to keep it light. Astrology offers many comforts to people in uncertain times, and music and dance are always a salve for the soul. I ask that you please suspend all irony and think about the human desire to be creative, and the opportunities afforded to us to express that creativity through public means. If you want to know more about how this came to be, you can read about it here: https://www.weirdomusicforever.com/…/harvey-sid-fisher-gets…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKO1t97di1I

Marvelous Movie Mondays: Where’s Wayne’s World?

EPFC | March 2nd, 2020

MARVELOUS MOVIE MONDAYS!!
guest curator: Cristina Kolozsváry-Kiss

Theme: Where’s Wayne’s World? A brief dive into the disappearing world of democratic and non-commercial television made possible by public access.

It all started about 12 years ago when I happened to catch a screening of Winnipeg Babysitter while studying in Syracuse, NY. The program was a compilation of clips from Public Access Television in Winnipeg, CA curated by artist Daniel Barrow. A description of the program that I found online should tell you all you need to know: “In the late 70s and throughout the 80s, Winnipeg experienced a ‘golden age’ of public access television whereby almost anyone with a creative dream was granted airtime and professional production services”.
Since then I have had a minor obsession with the subject of Public Access Television, which has led to a masters thesis in the preservation of this material. Much of this work–which was produced all over cities and towns across North America–is at risk of being lost forever. Turns out there isn’t any money in archiving non-commercial media, just like there isn’t any money in making it (which explains why so many stations are now gone). Until the problem of preservation is solved, Youtube (which, I feel compelled to emphasize, is not public and heavily monetized) is often the best and only resource for seeing this work, though often in terrible quality and without context.
Should Winnipeg Babysitter ever go on tour again, please catch it! Barrow’s work as both programmer and archivist is really loving and inspiring, and you will catch glimpses of lost treasures of television, such as Survival!, which aired from 1985-1987 and is linked below.

For the month of March, I ask you to think about what democratic media means in light of these questions: how has the industrialization and monetization of art and culture impacted us as a society? What systems of power determine what is “good” and who gets to be an “artist”? Who should be able to access the resources necessary to create art and media?

#marvelousmoviemondays

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kaMTqfHdPM