More Than a Game: Television Archives in Two Acts

Television archives are not only illustrations of the past, but also a powerful medium for artistic expression. This audiovisual essay takes an artistic approach to television archives. Producing new and unique pieces of art is one way of exploring the potential of archival footage that is kept in television vaults. The idea of developing artistic work by adding music, new voices and narratives to silent videos in the archives came out of the desire to experiment and bring new experiences of television archives out in the real world, whether in museums, cultural institutions or music clubs. The creative and experimental approach to using television archives started out as a game to motivate archivists to take pleasure in their hard and meticulous work. As part of this experimentation, there was an exploration of the metatextuality and intertextuality found in the archival videos and metadata. Working in imaginative registers took us from finding random words on old archival description cards to creating slam poetry and music. In a nutshell, it led us to creating performance art.