Apprenez à regarder la TV avec la radio

FIAC ( FOIRE INTERNATIONALE D'ART CONTEMPORAIN)
19 OCTOBRE 1984

Concept

During a radio programme, given as such, the project consists of asking all the listeners of ten free radio stations, brought together for the occasion, to turn on their televisions and then instantly mute them!
A radio presenter will simultaneously comment on and critically analyse the image being broadcast. An image shared by everyone in real time! By telephone feedback, listeners can themselves intervene on air live to give their point of view. The role of the presenter (and the image specialists around him...) is to create the conditions for an unprecedented situation. It's a situation that's educational, fun and creative all at the same time, calling on the imaginations of the participants, using images that have no sound, and whose meaning must be nurtured and invented as they emerge.
The originality of the project lies in the fact that it is a given medium (radio) that is used here, in a way superimposed on it, for the critical analysis of a second medium (television). Forest often uses similar hybrids in his various projects, which, by deliberately distancing themselves, help us to understand how communication systems work.
In this project, the fact that the sharing of the same image in real time (and the abolition of the physical space that such an event implies) is made 'conscious' from a distance is in itself a highly emotive situation for all the participants. Secondly, the fact that this situation can become the object, beyond elementary cinesthetic or simply proprioceptive perception, of a sharing of ideas, ideas likely to be adjusted in 'collaborative' concertation, undoubtedly also creates the conditions required and inherent in the formation of what we would today call a virtual community.
- Pedagogical involvement: learning to read television images.
- Playful involvement: audiences become the presenters - for example, taking charge of the football report by substituting the names of politicians or philosophers for those of the players!
- Stimulation of the imagination: an exquisite cadaver game with images that have no sound, and which must be given meaning and a narrative structure.

Device

• a fully-equipped car-studio set up on the forecourt of the Grand Palais
• ten free radio partners : Radio Libertaire, Radio Aligre, Radio 92.8, La voix du Lézard,Fréquence Gay, Radui G Stéréo, La radio spectacle, Le Poste Parisien, Radio Soleil Goutte d’or, Fréquence Libre…

The following spoke on air : Catherine Millet, Henrico Fulchignoni, Pierre Moëglin, Jean Mottet, Barthélemy, Daniel Populus, Gérard Blanchard, Nathalie Graham, Uwe Petersen, Harout Bezdjian.

• " De l’art de la communication à la communication de l’art ", Pierre Moëglin, Art Press International, N° 88, Paris, octobre 1984
• " Regardez la T.V. avec votre radio ", Pierre Moëglin, Communication et Langages, N° 64, Paris, 1985.