The Situation Envisaged II (Air Gallery London 1979)
![](https://rewind.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/146/2018/05/DH093-01s.jpg)
Creator:
Hall, David-
Year: 1979
Media types:Video
Type of work:Multi screen Video Installation
Funding source: Video Art78, Arts Council of GB,
First exhibited: Video Art78, Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry
‘Eight domestic TV receivers are placed side by side at eye level on a wall-to-wall support in a quarter-circle across the corner of a room. Each is facing into the enclosed space and away from the viewer, and each is tuned to a different TV channel from the next. The viewer hears a cacophony of sound, and sees only an ever-changing projected glow beyond and above the line of TV sets. On approaching the installation, the screen of a video monitor is glimpsed through a small gap between each alternate set. It is playing a videotape, the content of which is difficult to decipher since the gap restricts the visual field to a narrow vertical section of the screen. The four possible viewpoints each offer a different segment – suggesting the assembly of coherent information only as the viewer moves from viewpoint to viewpoint. In doing so the tape time continuum is broken – expectations of a narrative progression are both implied and rejected – sometimes phasing by coincidence with the movement 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, 1978.
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