Remote

 Enter a lazy night in watching the box. Going nowhere & everywhere via the remote control.Turn on, Tune in, Drop in.

"Remote", October 2006. Remote is a performance that explores the relationship that we "the viewers" have with television. Mixing film, performance and installation in this piece Minsky continues his previous work on the subject of television. The artist states that for Remote, "the audience is invited into the living room to observe the viewer trying to escape from his digitally induced coma." On entering the dimly lit space the audience is presented with a high wall stretching horizontally across the room framed by tarpaulin at either end. Black and yellow hazard tape runs across the floor and the audience is greeted by two girls clad in hard hats. Has the audience entered some kind of construction site? Is this actually the right space? Slightly bemused the audience gathers behind the wall and the two construction site workers give the audience the choice of sitting down if they wish, which they all do. Already towering above the standing audience the wall becomes even more mammoth than it had first seemed. Silence spreads across the audience as they wait for something to happen. At this point the artist and the other performers (including myself) are waiting in position on the other side of the wall. Also in silence, we listen to the reactions of various audience members and wait for what we know is about to begin. On the other side of the wall the silence is about to end. The advert begins. "Hello, people of Manchester. Have you ever dreamed of owning your own piece of artwork but couldn’t afford it? Well now you can. My name is Jason Minsky and I’m offering you a limited edition miniature artwork absolutely free." This advert, a previous artwork by the artist entitled As Seen On TV has started to play and is being projected onto the wall facing the audience. A sigh of relief panders over the audience as they begin to watch the advert followed by a few murmurs of amusement. There are two versions of As Seen On TV and these are being played back to back not once, twice but three times. Knowing this on the other side of the wall the adrenalin starts to build as we await our cue. I start to think that maybe the audience is getting bored with the advert. Three repetitive loops, that is quite a lot. As the third loop begins we get ready and settle into position. The advert stops. Silence. The As Seen On TV advert finishes and the audience remain seated. Seemingly lulled into a false sense of security by the comfort and familiarity of the advert the atmosphere has become tense, this tension fuelled by an unknowing expectancy of what might happen next. Perhaps perceived as a type of art prankster, regular audience members to Jason Minsky’s performances might be well accustomed to expect the unexpected. However, this doesn’t detract from the event that is about to happen. The wall collapses, crashing down before the audience. The sound effects give the impression that a real wall has just fallen but the wall is in fact made of polystyrene and has been painted to resemble real concrete blocks. It doesn’t hit anyone but stays within the black and yellow "hazard" taped parameters. With the walls collapse the audience’s vision is no longer blocked and they can now see through to another space. At the rear end of the space a large projection fills the back wall. On this screen a mixture of adverts and snippets of programmes have just begun playing and in front of this a man (Minsky) sits watching TV from his couch. Undisturbed by the ruckus that has just occurred behind him the man, settled on the sofa in his "living room" lays entranced by the scenes appearing on the screen. The audience, now a part of this mock living room and as voyeurs of this space also watch the screen, following the gaze of the man on the couch. The TV programmes/adverts on the screen play for about fifteen minutes and like Minsky, become the focus of the audience’s attention. Holding his remote pointed towards the screen Minsky flicks incessantly from channel to channel. These clips, assembled by the artist prior to the performance, are varied in pace and the clips appear randomly both in order and viewing time, chopping and changing from news reports to game-shows to fitness videos to cookery shows. Verbal reactions to these clips from the man on the couch can be heard interspersed at various moments. So, by showing these ads what is the artist really trying to focus our attention on here? Is it the content of the ads, the order in which they are shown, the actual process of watching them or the act of channel surfing and the continual chopping and changing of channels? Minsky seems to be commenting on all of these factors. Even though the adverts appearance on the screen seems quite random and ad hoc, it is clear that some of the ads have been deliberately pieced together and it is impossible not to notice the ordering of these and the juxtaposition of serious news reports with weather forecasts, religious preachers followed by fitness videos and game shows followed by yet another glossy sales pitch advertising useless and unwanted "quality" items that will so say transform your life if you buy one. With this, Minsky seems to be highlighting the transparency of television and its power to reduce and problematically present topics on a level playing-field. Are we even aware of this? Re-enacting the TV viewer’s obsession with channel-surfing the artist also comments on our need for visual engagement and the comfort offered by TV: If you don’t like what’s on just change the channel. However, is it really that simple? Crucially, how controlling is television as a conveyor of images/products/ideals and lifestyles? As stated by Minsky, "god, sex, juicers, books, they are all trying to sell us something." So, can we draw the line between what we see on TV and what we do and aspire to outside of this? Such dichotomies seem to be a persistent theme in Minsky’s work and much of his previous work has centred on exploring the art/life dichotomy. As noted by Henry Meyric-Hughes, principal concerns in Minsky’s work have been to, "break down barriers of all kinds, between "high" and low, between artist and audience, and between the artwork (whether tangible, or not) and the public (consumer/participant)." Remote seems to be doing the same and in this first part of the performance when the adverts are playing on the enlarged screen watched by the artist (as the man on the couch) and the audience (as viewers and participants of the performance), one of its most successful elements seems to be the way in which it raises an awareness in the viewer by tapping into such a familiar, quite mundane and unthought-of practice like watching TV. Sat at home flicking from channel to channel, are we aware of what we are watching, why we are watching it and do we even care? Reaching for our remotes to perhaps escape from the tragedy on the news and the unpleasant explicitness of non-smoking adverts do we look for a type of reassurance and escapism? And if so, do we get it? A phone ringing on a TV ad signals the end of the reel of TV clips and as the phone rings on a TV programme, the phone on the man’s couch begins to ring. Awoken from his trance-like state Minsky answers the phone. Looking confused, he repeats, "back on in a few minutes." Putting down the phone, the focus now shifts away from the now blank large screen and the man on the couch. On the left-hand side of the room a new area lights up revealing five mock TV screens in which adverts are now going to be played out. Extending from the 2-dimensional TV screen to a 3-dimensional set, the role of the TV in the performance takes its first steps towards becoming interactive. As the adverts on the main screen have been playing, myself and the other performers have been waiting behind our individual mock cardboard TV screens with our backs turned towards the audience. I am writing this piece from the viewpoint of taking part in the performance. Knowing that I would be writing a text about the work, when I was asked to be in it I was worried about the paradoxical position I may be placed in, being both in the work and therefore invested in it whilst wanting to remain critical and objective when writing about it. However, with Minsky’s previous installation/performance Pick Your Own I was placed in a very similar situation. Based in the installation as the "secretary" I had to inform visitors about the piece but I also had a role to perform. I had to pretend that I was a real secretary, I had a phone, a notepad etc and I was in charge of the maps which every visitor, on approaching the desk, was asked to take and colour in on the map where they would like their own green space in Manchester city centre to be. On completing their maps, I would then stick these onto the wall to make a visual statement about the necessity of getting more public access green spaces in the city centre. My roles became merged. When the adverts come to a close and the phone rings the focus of both the TV viewer on the couch and the performance and TV audience shift to us. As the light strikes our individual screens in which we are sat behind and positioned within the frame, we begin our advertising spiel, feeding off and reflecting that just shown on the larger screen. "Now ladies have I got an offer for you ¦consonant please ¦ vowel/ Hey handsome how you doing?" The light jumps from screen to screen at random intervals just like that incurred by the man’s channel-surfing on the main TV screen. Out of the five mock TV screens, three of the screens change with the same person taking on a different role/character/action each time the light falls on them. Two screens remain constant with one screen showing a Mexican guitar player, playing music and occasionally singing. The other screen continually shows a hand holding up various objects for the viewer to buy and is the only screen constantly in silence. This "live" section features as a repeat of the first section of adverts and programmes showed on the TV screen. Performing ads, advertising slogans and various roles akin to that showed on TV we reiterate this through performance making live that seen on television and bombarding the TV viewer(s) with a cacophony of slogans, consumerist objects, news reports, characters, stories, chat room invitations and personal revelations. The lights continue to switch randomly from screen to screen. After five minutes, the sound of an alarm signals the move towards the TV going interactive, echoed by a robotic voice coming from behind the screens bellowing slowly in a monotone voice, "let’s go interactive." At this point, the pace increases and whilst advertising our products we urge the viewer to go interactive by pressing the "red button now." Like the previous TV clips, we try and draw the viewer in by encouraging them to buy products or sign up to the services we are offering which they can do via their remote controls (by pressing a particular button), via telephone (by dialling a number) and via credit card (by giving us their bank details). TV channels are continually fighting for a share of the audience and by making a connection with the viewer by obtaining some of their personal details these channels gain a degree of control over that person. Instructed by our taunts, the man on the couch presses his red button and in doing so, loses control of his TV set. The products previously being advertised on TV are now getting thrown through the screens towards the viewer on the couch hitting him in his living room. Footballs, boxing gloves, women’s vests all pelt towards the man on his couch followed by a dog bone to which he puts in his mouth after the TV ad shouts "Eat it!" The viewer has now lost complete control. Attacked and controlled by the ads on TV the viewer cant escape. A news report begins. Shifting the focus of the performance, a theatrical interplay begins between two news reporters, one based in his studio (in one of the mock cardboard TV screens) and the reporter in the field who is situated at the opposite end of the room adjacent to the man on the couch and is meant to be reporting from outside of this man’s house. The reporter in the field slowly enters the man’s living room with a film crew and announces that this man, Jason Trotsky is apparently the last man in Britain to have never appeared on TV. Reporting on the chaotic events that have occurred in the man’s house that evening the cameraman flicks the camera’s focus from the reporter to the living room to show the debris caused by the collapse of the wall and the audience, who, according to the reporter, have literally forced their way through into the man’s living room by knocking down his wall. Through this live transmission by the cameraman, the audience are now being filmed as they watch themselves on screen and appear to be seeing themselves in a digital mirror, trapped as both members of an audience and performers/participants in a performance, leaving Jason Trotsky as the last and only person to have never appeared on television. As the reporter in the field tries to continue his story, the transmission begins to break down and the report ends with the focus going back to the studio. As the five screens resume their role the man gets up from his position on the couch. The lights flashing on the screens are fast and continuous and the noise coming from each screen is loud, attacking and relentless, each one bombarding the viewer with products to buy, stories to tell, and instructions to give. At this point, the man gets up from his previous position on the couch and picking up a mock piece of dynamite that had been thrown out of one of the TV screens during the period of interactive TV, he begins to wrap it getting it ready to light. As the only person left to have never appeared on TV, he now appears on the screen before him. Looking at the screen that he had previously been watching TV on, the man now watches himself on the screen. Not only has he been invaded in his own home but he has now become the subject that he is watching. Seemingly, there is no escape. Lighting the dynamite there is an explosion, ending the pandemonium of the TV screens. Everything goes white with the blast. When the normal light is resumed the audience, now the only viewers left in the space, find them watching themselves on the TV screen. No-one else is left. Exited from the couch and the mock TV screens, the performers and the man on the couch now emerge from the opposite side of the space and walk diagonally across the man’s living room. Walking in a line and in silence across the room and each wearing a vest, as a product that had been advertised on TV, we represent the inescapability of television and advertising on our daily lives. Making us aware of the control exerted on us by television, this performance shows us how inescapable this control is. By taking the TV into interactive, Minsky stages a battle between the television viewer and the television adverts, playing out to extreme the types of messages and relationships that can evolve here, between television and viewer, product and consumer and artist and voyeur. As an artist Minsky has always had a fascination with the absurdity and bizarreness of everyday objects and he takes a real delight in the packaging and labelling of standard consumer goods. His choices of objects added a humorous element to Remote and humour is a key element to all of Minsky’s work which is seen in Remote through an almost over-analysis of what we watch on TV and how TV operates. For Minsky, in someway we are all by default on TV, walking down the street when a news report is being filmed, appearing in the crowd at a football ground and in the audience at a chat show. In reference to the obsession with the cult of celebrity that seems to be sweeping the nation at the moment as seen in the influx of reality TV shows, gossip magazines and advertising campaigns, always wanting to get our custom, sign us up to the best deal and sell us their latest product – perhaps it’s impossible to really ever escape form this? Or, maybe we just haven’t found an easy escape route yet? Crucially, what Remote does is not only highlight the inescapability of these mechanisms of control (which could perhaps be linked to the work of contemporary artists Mark Titchner and Phil Collins) but how we are both paradoxically reliant upon and manifested within them. Text by Lisa Beauchamp.