Zeloot, Satellite of Love, 2006

Melik Ohanian, HIT, 1998

Simon Payne, Color Bars, video (8 min.), 2004 Courtesy of the artist and LUX, London

From January 26 through March 26, 2006, Witte de With is presentingSatellite of Love, in association with the TENT. Center for Visual Arts and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).
www.explodingtelevision.net.

During the festival (January 25 – February 5, 2006), Satellite of Lovewill be the nerve center for the Exploding Television section of the IFFR’s program. As in previous years, this section of the festival, organized by Edwin Carels, focuses on recent developments in digital technology that influence or perhaps even result in radical shifts within visual and audiovisual culture. Satellite of Love will become the headquarters of a veritable TV commune, a utopian project. Furthermore, in association with the VPRO, Exploding Television will be manifesting itself online via www.explodingtelevision.net.

The rapidly changing media landscape and especially that of the medium of television lie at the basis of the Satellite of Love exhibition. Over recent months, not a day has gone by without the media reporting technological, financial or political maneuvers in the world of television. The number of digital broadcasters is skyrocketing. The convergence of television, the Internet and mobile telephony is bringing about a radical change in the way programs are being presented to the public.
The means of distributing image and sound may be increasing by the day, but this ?openness? also masks a new form of restriction. While at first a communal forum was developed for a broad public, it now appears that segmentation is striking due to market influences, with profit as the ultimate objective. In other words, the public space is disappearing while private space is gaining ground. Making television using a camera and a laptop hardly presents a problem, but a satellite link continues to be a privilege for the happy few.

In response to these trends, the organizers chose to provide a platform for the independent voice. In Satellite of Love, visual artists, media activists and television-makers rediscover something that is being torn apart from the top down. The aim is to establish a space (for reflection) where the production of live television is combined with installations. In addition, in the afternoon and evening there is a program of public discussions, masterclasses, and TV dinners organized in association with the Stimuleringsfonds Culturele Omroepproducties (Fund for Cultural Broadcasting Productions) and V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media.Satellite of Love and Exploding Television will also be broadcast online via VPRO Digitaal and local television, thus providing a lively context for interaction and reflection.

Participants in Satellite of Love include Franz Ackermann, AL+AL, Francis Alÿs, Mark Bain, John Logie Baird, Pierre Bismuth & Michel Gondry, Angela Bulloch, Edith Dekyndt, Dias & Riedweg, Michel François, Laurent Grasso, Erik van Lieshout, Yves Netzhammer, Melik Ohanian, Daniel Sauter & Osman Khan, Monika Sosnowska, Maurice van Tellingen, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Francesco Vezzoli.
During the ten days of the IFFR, the following units will be producing live television: Ambient TV.NET from London, CAC TV from Vilnius, Orfeo TV-Telestreet from Bologna, De Taalpolitie from Rotterdam/Brussels, and tv-tv from Copenhagen.

A special program will be presented during the Museum Night on March 4, 2006, see www.rotterdamsemuseumnacht.nl/startEN.html.

Also see the Exploding Television website. From January 23 onward atwww.explodingtelevision.net.

Special thanks to all participating artists and television units, V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, STIFO,
the Mondriaan Foundation, VPRO, Dutchview, Tiscali, AFAA and the French Embassy in the Netherlands.

About the participants

Ackermann, Franz
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Al and Al Biography Al and Al (Great Brittain, 1971) Al and Al met in a chance encounter whilst visiting Derek Jarman's Garden in Dungeness in 1997. They soon realised this meeting was perhaps more than a mere coincidence after discovering they had been given the same first three names, Alan James Edwards, during the same year of birth, 1971. http://www.alandal.co.uk/
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Ambient TV.net Biography Ambient TV.net ambientTV.NET is a London based collective that continually develops social and technological infrastructure and encourages network architecture in order to provide alternatives to contemporary socio-political and economic formations. The independent interdisciplinary applications, vary from installation and performance through documentary, dance and gastronomy to sound and visual compositions and real-time manipulation. The techniques and effects of live broadcasts form the theme, medium and performing space for many of the works. The collective makes for Satellite of Love Ceefax words for both national and international broadcasting channels. In addition, they document themselves using a wall of visual and text collages that belong with their broadcasts. ambientTV.NET also provides a number of installations: Broadbandit Highway (ambientTV.NET), Moment of the Long Now (Juha Huuskonen), Art Broadcasters Unlimited (broadcast projects by British artists, including Pirate Radio Scanner, Rachel Baker/Irational.org) and Hacked Nintendo (Paul B. Davis en Emma Davidson). The umbrella title for these projects is, The Voluptuously Blinking Eye. www.ambienttv.net
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Bain, Mark Biography Mark Bain (Seattle Washington, USA, 1966) Lives and works in Amsterdam.
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Bismuth, Pierre Born 1963 in Paris, France. Lives and works in Brussels.Selected solo exhibitions include Le versant de l’analyse, Jan Mot, Brussels; Le psy, l'artiste et le cuisinier, Nuit Blanche, Musée d'art et d'histoire du judaïsme, Paris; Pierre Bismuth, Fremantle Arts Center, Fremantle; and La galerie est heureuse de vous inviter à la nouvelle exposition de Pierre Bismuth, Galerie Bugada & Cargnel, Paris (all 2010); Objects That Should Have Changed Your Life, Base Progetti per l'Arte, Florence; Following the Right Hand of..., Team Gallery, New York (both 2009); The All Seeing Eye (The Hardcore Techno Version), British Film Institute, London; Ruled by Extravagant Expectations, Galerie Christine König, Vienna (both 2008); One Size Fits All, Mary Boone Gallery, New York (2007); and Coming Soon, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica (2006). Recent group exhibitions include 21st Century: Art in the First Decade, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Bild für Bild, Film und zeitgenössische Kunst, Museum Ostwall im Dortmunder U, Dortmund; The Last Newspaper, New Museum, New York; Une forme pour toute action, Le Printemps de Septembre, Musée les Abattoirs, Toulouse; Yesterday Will Be Better, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; Chef d'oeuvre, Centre Pompidou, Metz; Seconde Main, ARC, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Exhibition, exhibition / Mostra, mostra, Castello di Rivoli, Turin; and Repetition Island, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (all 2010). In 2005, Bismuth won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay along with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman for the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
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Bulloch, Angela Angela Bulloch (b. 1966, Canada) is a Berlin-based sculptor, installation and sound artist. She was included in the 1988 Freeze Exhibition. Bulloch was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997. Bulloch teaches at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions include Information, Manifesto, Rules and Other Leaks…, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2011); Discrete Manifold Whatsoever, Simon Lee Gallery, London; Redux, Esther Schipper, Berlin (both 2010); and The space that time forgot, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus & Kunstbau, Munich (2008). Recent group exhibitions include Art Parcours, Art Basel 41, Münster Cathedral, Basel; A Roll Of The Dice, Cristina Guerra, Lisbon; Drawing Time, Galeries Poirels, Frac Lorraine, Metz; High ideals and crazy dreams, Galerie Vera Munro, Hamburg; and Open light in private spaces, Biennale for international Light Art, Unna (all 2010); Universal Code, The Power Plant, Toronto; and Yellow and Green, MMK Frankfurt, Frankfurt (both 2009).
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CAC TV Biography CAC TV (Vilnius, Lithuania) So far, Andy Warhol is the only American artist who has had his own television show on a commercial channel. Today, the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius is probably the only institution in the world that has been given an opportunity by a commercial channel to make and broadcast its own program. The staff of Haute Couture Industry could not resist such an offer. Only television sceptics could set to work so enthusiastically, distorting and reinventing genres. The CAC TV Team, consisting on this occasion of Virginija Januskeviciute, Valentinas Klimasauskas, Aurelija Maknyte and Raimundas Malasauskas, chose the most applicable and most open methods of television making to protest against the old-fashioned and outmoded principle of "artists for artists about art." CAC TV has a variety of aims, including to create a television genre that did not yet exist on Lithuanian television, encouraging critical skills in the viewer, deconstructing the foundations of intellectual infotainment, and exploring the field of open-source (reality) programming and self-regulation. For this, CAC TV borrowed from a reality-meta-show genre, with as motto: "Each program is a pilot. Each program is the last. The content of each program is the making of that program." In Rotterdam, the notion of "television as a game" is the starting point for a new episode. www.cac.lt/tv
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Dekyndt, Edith Biography Edith Dekyndt (Ypres, Belgium, 1960) Edith Dekyndt (b. 1960 in Ypres, Belgium) lives and works in Tournai, Belgium.She has been included in a number of exhibitions worldwide: La trahison des images ©, Pallazzo Franchetti, Venice Biennale 2001, The Weather, Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver 2004, Brussels South Airport, Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna 2005, One Second of Silence, Parker’s Box Gallery, New York 2008, Present Perfect, Program Gallery, Berlin 2008, Political/ Minimal, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2008, Show Me, Don’t Tell Me, Brussels Biennale 2008, Nos (Us), Museu da República, Rio de Janeiro 2009, Upcoming solo exhibition: The Transparent Ceiling, Galerie Les filles du Calvaire, Parijs, 20 March till 20 April 2009. A forthcoming monograph, I Rememeber Earth edited by Denis Gielen, will be published by Facteur Humain in March, 2009
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Dias, Mauricio Biography Mauricio Dias Maurício Dias (Rio de Janeiro, 1964) lives in Rio de Janeiro. Dias has been working with Walter Riedweg since 1993. Building on their earlier experiences, in the visual arts (Dias) and in theater and music (Riedweg), their work is decidedly interdisciplinary and is produced in close collaboration with specific groups in society. Displaying an intense formal interest in video installation, the work of Dias & Riedweg investigates how private psychologies affect public space, with issues of alterity as its central topic.
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François, Michel Biography Michel François (Saint-Trond, Belgium, 1956) Michel François uses a range of materials and methods, combining industrial and natural objects in his installations and videos. He refers to everyday customs and habits in an associative manner without detracting from their general validity. According to François, we can become poetically acquainted with the world around us through our aesthetic experiences. He shares the Arte Povera mentality for materials devoid of artistic meaning, revealing their inherent sculptural and aesthetic qualities without negating their original functions. François’ video work is often based on the isolation of interludes, tiny events and movements, and the engraving of tiny sculptures in real time. His work was show in the exhibition Manure, Nettles, and Dandelions, Witte de With, Rotterdam (1997). More recently he has had solo exhibitions at SMAK, Ghent (2009); Thomas Dane, London (2008); MC Project, Los Angeles (2008); Gallery Bortolami, New York (2008) and Witte de With / IFFR, Rotterdam (2005). Group exhibitions include Documenta IX, Kassel (1992); and the XXII São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo (1994). Since January 1996, Michel François has been a guest instructor at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam.
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Gondry, Michel Biography Michel Gondry Michel Gondry (1963, Versailles).
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Grasso, Laurent Biography Laurent Grasso (Mulhouse France, 1972) Lives and works in Paris and Rome.
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Khan, Osman Biography Osman Khan Osman Khan, Santa Monica, htttp://www.osmankhan.com
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Lektrolab Biography Lektrolab LEKTROLAB is a London based media arts company that specialises in music and sound workshops. Lektrolab is supported by a network of highly skilled musicians, DJ's, VJ's, video artists, programmers and new media artists.Microtel Up until 04 February 2006, you will be able to create teletext and email it to Microtel for broadcast on Netherlands TV station NOS. The teletext works will be exposed on textpages 450 till 455 on channel Nederland 1, 2 and 3. This new channel is called Microtel. The station managers are artists Emma Davidson [Lektrogirl] and Paul B. Davis from Lektrolab. Microtel is one of the projects curated by ambientTV.net as part of VBI [voluptuous blinking eye]. www.lektrolab.com
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Lieshout, Erik van Born 1968 in Deurne, The Netherlands. Lives and works in Rotterdam.Selected solo exhibitions include How Can I Help You?, Hayward Gallery, London (2011); Echter Luxus, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (2010); keine Kohle kein Holz, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin; Im Netz, Ludwig Museum, Cologne; and Sex is Sentimental, Maccarone, New York (all 2009); I’m so scared of America, (together with Kelley Walker), De Hallen, Haarlem; Homeland Security, Projekt am Museumsplatz, Lenbachhaus, Munich; Kunsthaus Hollywood, Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich; and Guantánamo Baywatch, Hammer Projects, Hammer Museum-UCLA, Los Angeles (all 2007). Selected group exhibitions include Beziehungsarbeit. Artists and institutions, Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna (2011); Trust, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul; and Morality, Witte de With, Rotterdam (both 2010); editions vs objets, Centre d'édition contemporaine, Geneva; and Shifting Identities, CAC Vilnius (2009); Busan Biennale, Busan; After Nature, New Museum, New York; Brave New Worlds, Jumex Collection, Mexico City; and Institutional and Poetical Violence, Museu Serralves, Porto (all 2008).
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Logie Baird, John Biography John Logie Baird John Logie Baird lived from 1888-1946 in Scotland.
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Melhus, Bjørn
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Netzhammer, Yves
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Ohanian, Melik Biography Melik Ohanian (Paris, France, 1969) Lives and works in Paris, France.
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Orfeo TV Telestreet Biography Orfeo TV ? Telestreet (Bologna, Italy) Orfeo-Telestreet has distinguished itself by organizing audience campaigns against the monopoly position of the major television stations; people can make their own television programs. With the aid of mutual link-ups and co-operative efforts, the Telestreet projects achieve an optimum mixture of media technologies, based on both television and the Internet. This allows Telestreet to set up street television stations on a relatively small budget. In Italy, there are now about 250 mini television channels, each run by 10 to 15 people. With the aid of aerials on the roofs of houses, each station can broadcast to a radius of about 300 meters. If several aerials are linked together, it is possible to broadcast to a larger area. For Satellite of Love Telestreet relocates its usual approach to the context of Rotterdam. Passers-by will be interviewed at the Centrale Bibliotheek (Central Library) and on the market. Interviewees can see themselves surrounded by Telestreet graphics and archive footage on a projection screen in the foyer of the library. Telestreet's main production facility is located at Witte de With.Meta-Medium For Satellite of Love Telestreet relocates its usual approach to the context of Rotterdam. Passers-by will be interviewed at the Centrale Bibliotheek (Central Library) and on the market. Interviewees can see themselves surrounded by Telestreet graphics and archive footage on a projection screen in the foyer of the library. Telestreet's main production facility is located at Witte de With. www.telestreet.it
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Riedweg, Walter

Biography Walter Riedweg Walter Riedweg (Luzern, 1955) lives in Rio de Janeiro. Riedweg and Maurício Dias have been working together since 1993. Building on their earlier experiences, in the visual arts (Dias) and in theater and music (Riedweg), their work is decidedly interdisciplinary and is produced in close collaboration with specific groups in society. Displaying an intense formal interest in video installation, the work of Dias & Riedweg investigates how private psychologies affect public space, with issues of alterity as its central topic.

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Sauter, Daniel Biography Daniel SauterDaniel Sauter, Chicago, http://www.daniel-sauter.com;
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Sosnowska, Monika Biography Monika Sosnowska (Ryki, Poland, 1972) Lives in Warsaw, Poland.
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Tellingen, Maurice van Biography Maurice van Tellingen (Hilversum,. The Netherlands, 1957) Lives in Amsterdam.
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Tiravanija, Rirkrit Biography Rirkrit Tiravanija (Buenos Aires, 1961) Lives in New York, Thailand and Berlin.
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tv-tv Biography tv-tv (Copenhagen, Denmark) tv-tv is a decentralized network of producers. At the Free University of Copenhagen, FreeUtvresearch has been set up, a unit within which research is done and where it is possible to experiment with television as public space. From the manifesto of tv-tv: "tv-tv is independently organized television. It is not a state organization, nor the television of the marketplace. tv-tv is a network of independent producers who all want to make television. tv-tv wants to break away from the traditional monopoly of the means of production and broadcasting rights." tv-tv is an attempt to create a different kind of public space. The participants in tv-tv do not take any notice of generalizations about what people want based on ratings. They concentrate more on investigating television as a means of communication with a short distance from street to broadcast.tv-tv manifesto:tv-tv is everyone?s television. Today it has become easy to produce tv. Technical innovation has it made possible to produce television with your own equipment. We will use and misuse all possible tools to make tv. tv-tv is broadcast quality on our terms: everyone can make tv.tv-tv is self-organized tv, neither the state's apparatus nor the market's tv. tv-tv is a network of independent producers who all are longing to make tv. tv-tv wants to break the traditional monopoly of the means of production and the right to broadcast.tv-tv is publicness. We see tv as an active part of the public sphere in which society is mediated. tv-tv is an effort to produce another public sphere.tv-tv is investigating tv. we want to experiment with tv, make time for an investigation of tv?s possibilities and break with the rhythms offered by most tv channels. We will refuse ratings based generalizations of what people want, and rather investigate tv as a setting for communication. We want to break the monotony that characterizes tv today.tv-tv is tv of the everyday. With tv-tv we will create a public based on everyday experience in Copenhagen and around the world. tv-tv will be a station with a short distance between being on the street and being on the air. We shall attempt a direct and diverse mode of address, taking its point of view in the passions we encounter and the abilities we establish.tv-tv is critical tv. We do not aim to reflect society, and we will try to abolish the ?viewer? as a passive consumer. We will not just produce tv: we will produce tv-tv.www.tv-tv.dk
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Vezzoli, Francesco Biography Francesco Vezzoli (Brescia, Italy, 1971) Lives and works in Milano, Italy. Francesco Vezzoli is influenced by the era of the `glamour cinema` and its sacrosanct divas, which he confronts with popular ´`soap culture´, Freud and Pasolini. In 2006 Vezzoli’s work was shown at Witte de With as part of the group exhibition Satellite of Love, in association with the TENT Center for Visual Arts and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Vezzoli has had solo shows in several major venues including Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Museu Serralves, Porto; Fondazione Prada, Milan and Le Consortium, Dijon. His works have also been included in several biennials such as the 2006 Whitney Biennial, the 49th and 51st Venice Biennials, the 26th São Paulo Biennial; the 6th International Istanbul Biennial; and in group shows at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; Tate Liverpool; and the Migros Museum, Zurich. The Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills exhibition in 2006 marks Vezzoli's first with Gagosian.
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Westenberg, Peter Biography Peter Westenberg (Enter, Netherlands, 1968) Lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. The projects by visual artist and film maker Peter Westenberg (1968) vary from printed matter to films and interactive media. They reflect his interest in visual discoveries, social myths, psycho-geography, media representation and sentimental journeys. www.videomagazijn.org/index.htmlThe Language Police is a project conceived by Peter Westenberg for Satellite of Love. The format is a vlog (video weblog) about the word "allochtoon" (used in Dutch to mean "non-Dutch"). In this weblog, videos are collected and annotated ? provided with commentary, background information and context. Two classes from the college of graphics in Rotterdam, led by teacher Peter Kunnen, form the Language Police crew. For two months (the duration of the exhibition), Rotterdam kids investigate whether the word allochtoon can still be used and if not, what should we use? What do you call others? And what or who is "an other"? The vlog comprises street interviews (in corporation with Cineac, Rotterdam), workshops, sketches, background information and links, but the kids also look at their own position and the (im)possibility of shaping their own identities. Prior to the exhibition, they have taken part in a workshop with the Onafhankelijk Toneel theatre group, with actor Jamal Boukhriss as the central figure, about adopting a different personality. The result of this workshop is also part of the exhibition. Language Police (Dutch)
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About the collaborators

TENT

TENT is a platform for contemporary art in Rotterdam. The exhibition space is located at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, an historic former school building at the Witte de 50, the culture street Rotterdam. Through its diverse programming TENT focuses on relevant developments in contemporary art.www.tentrotterdam.nl
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V2_

V2_ is interested in the relationships and interactions between different media and in the relationship between art and scientific disciplines. The connections between art, technology, media and society are continuously explored, by bringing together artists, scientists and civil organizations and by initiating interdisciplinary collaborations. Over the past 20 years V2_ has succeeded in establishing an ongoing dialogue within a wide network of contacts that contributes to the development of specific (art) projects for research and presentation. V2_ offers a critical perspective on the futuristic promises that new media technologies always seem to carry.www.v2.nl
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