La photo du téléspectateur à la RTB - Radio Télévision Belge

La photo du téléspectateur

ÉMISSION VIDÉOGRAPHIE R.T.B. (RADIO TÉLÉVISION BELGE)
13 NOVEMBRE 1976

Concept

To close a forty-minute programme devoted to him by Jean-Paul Trefois on R.T.B, the artist gave a live performance. Framed in close-up on the screen and addressing viewers, Fred Forest made a speech, claiming that recent advances in technology had made it possible to photograph viewers in their own homes... from the television. The artist then simulates the role of the photographer, asking interested viewers to take part in the experiment, to sit exactly 1.20 metres from their television set, to move slightly to the right, then to the left, to find themselves in the right angle of view, to smile ... and above all not to move! After a long tracking shot, the director gives a close-up of the camera Fred Forest is holding. One second of suspense! The photo is taken. More than 300 people wrote to the show's secretariat asking for their photo...
It's worth pointing out here that Fred Forest carried out a number of different actions during the programme, including a series of 'fake' breakdowns (more real than real!), after each of which the presenter apologised profusely to the viewer.
It should not be forgotten that the artist's primary aim in making this programme was to denounce and highlight the extent to which a medium such as television was capable of exploiting the public. In each sequence, the artist uses an almost pedagogical approach to demonstrate the reality and ease with which the public can be manipulated. In particular, he asks the director, live on air, to shine a light behind the scenes, so as to show, beyond the magic circle on which the cameras focus, a technical, industrial, human and... economic reality that is virtually never revealed on the small screens, by the very people who exploit it.

Dispositif

Forty minutes of airtime on R.T.B. and... a number of transgressions of its traditional uses and functions.