7-channel video (incl. 2 channel live filming & streaming), 2-channel teleprompter, sound – installation, 2017

Toma Peiu, Luiza Pârvu

Failure is Human is an archival-based audiovisual creative project that I started in 2017. Several creative iterations have come out of this.

The project critically looks at what might be learned from the juxtaposition of re-appropriated broadcast performances of admissions of failure, concession, guilt or embarrassment in a hyper-mediated public space. The work is not about the immediately obvious protagonists, but rather about the cracks in the ways technology is used to enact and translate dynamics of power manifested in the political status quo.

Televised rituals are enacted using performance, or decorum tropes – the tone of voice, the gaze, the costume; tropes of language, including references to the myths of the nation-state, dominant religion and democracy; and tropes of staging – the Presidential Hall, the podium / desk, the slow zoom-in / zoom-out between the medium close shot and the close-up of the speaker. This mixture is evidence of the permeability between the embodiment of political power, redemptive memory, the methods of performing arts and broadcast technologies.

Redemption Room is a moving image and sound installation deconstructing the language and theater of failure, excuse, admission of guilt or “unsuccess” in televised political performance. In the eventful year 2016, the televised concession seemed to be one of the preferred narratives of televisions around the world. Considering Alexander Galloway’s definition of the “interface” as effect / process, rather than “thing”, we wondered where the form was coming from, and, following in Julianne Rebentisch’s footsteps, what the role of the teleprompter was in the aestheticization of democratic life.

Visitors are invited to step inside a television studio where various political leaders are competing for the soundscape. Their speeches are scrolling on two teleprompters fixed to large studio cameras, that are also broadcasting from within the installation space – into the lobby.

Staged in the CMCI ATLAS Television Studio as a part of DISAVOWAL – a Critical Media Practices showcase, December 1st – 2nd, 2017.