TV-Aquarium (TV-Death I)

“Following the ideas of ‘Picturing is a Crime’ and the detached death image of TV, in 1970 I planned (to have) an animal die on everyone’s TV set, such that the viewer believes that in his own TV there is something really dying. I thought of a snake and a mouse. Then I combined this death obsession with another familiar concept: the identification of image and function or their counter-identity; I wanted ORF to film an aquarium and transmit this (...) still life over the whole day until the normal programme starts; and in such a way as to transform the TV set to an aquarium, to a still life object. The TV set could serve in several ways, e.g., as news source or as silence source, as an object of revolving visions or as an object of meditation etc. In 1972 ORF realised these ideas in some parts. But the aquarium lasted only two minutes and the fish did not really die after flowing out from the water and the appearance of the cathode ray tube (the death tube).”