‘Sixteen domestic TV receivers are arranged in a circle; each facing away from the viewer into the enclosed space; each playing a different TV channel from the next.. A videotape playing on a revolving monitor is glimpsed at the centre through small gaps.. each so fine that vision is restricted.. suggesting an attempt to assemble information coherently as the viewer moves from one to the next. In doing so, the continuum is broken. Expectations of narrative progression are both implied and rejected.. sometimes phasing (by coincidence) with the movements of the viewer, sometimes not. Fragments seen are of private ritual.. The work confronts issues of power and the individual; the public and the private; the viewer and the viewed…’
– David Hall, from notes for the exhibition, 1980.

First exhibited at Video Art ’78, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, 1978. A later version titled The Situation Envisaged II was exhibited at the Air Gallery, London in 1979.