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