TV-News (TV-Death II)

Die Kommunikation ist das Medium / Communication Is the Medium; Tele-Aktion (IV b) / Tele-Action (IV b); projected: 1970; broadcasted: June 29, 1972

“Video as box, the TV set as box. Communication is the medium.” “Death II (…) (is) another variation of my idea of video not as a screen but as a box. The message occurs in the medium. Words really taken at their meaning, the daily dose of deadly words, affect the death of their speaker/distributor. The intoxication of communication as it is daily affected by TV is shown visually by a slight deviation of behaviour: The news-speaker smokes. The smoke becomes an overdose because he sits in a box (the TV box), such that he finally suffocates in his own output: the deadly ecology of TV, the closed circuit of word and meaning, of meaning and action, feedback of action and information.” “After the transmission many people phoned up angrily, but not because the news was old and odd (the man read last month’s news), but because he smoked so much.” (Peter Weibel)