Purple Television
Gary Indiana TV Takeover
Prolific American novelist, playwright, critic, essayist and filmmaker GARY INDIANA will be curating a selection of films for this months TV Takeover. Notably he is the author of three novels (Three Month Fever, Resentment, and Indifference) exploring real-life crimes and the way victims and criminals alike are often distorted and exploited by the mass media.INDIANA also teaches philosophy and literature at the New School in New York City.
The takeover coincides with his third solo show in New York at envoy enterprises “GDA2: From The World Of Entertainment: Collages and Prints 1974 – 2014” – an exhibition showcasing Gary Indiana’s practice over the last four decades.
Throughout his work, Indiana explores art, sexuality, violence, money, the media and contemporary America. Last yearINDIANA contributed to the 2014 Whitney Biennial. The video work entitled “Untitled (Stanley Park)” is a stunning video he made of the Presidio Modelo, a “model prison” of Panopticon design, built on the Isla de la Juventud off the coast of Cuba. The infamous prison, constructed between 1926-28, and closed for good in 1967, was home to many political prisoners, including FIDEL CASTRO and his brother RAUL. The footage of the decaying prison, with its rotted cells all arranged in a circle around an ominous guard tower, is spliced with excerpts from A Touch of Evil, The Shanghai Gestureand images of swimming jellyfish which served as a metaphor for the surveillance state.
Once quoted as saying “My tendency as a writer is to amplify the negative” in his letter to our editor-in-chief OLIVIER ZAHM published in issue 8.
[March 24 2015] : Television
Gary Indiana TV Takeover / Private Life of a Cat (1947) by Alexander Hammid & Maya Deren
“The Internet must feature a million cat videos. They’re always cute and cause a nice warm feeling to swell up inside us but quite often they’re also vaguely disgusting, showing cats doing unusual things as if they only exist to amuse us, interacting in funny ways with human artifacts, playing pianos, etc. — catsplotation, basically. This film by A. Hammid and Maya Deren shows cats being cats, and, for once, the dignity and grace of this animal isn’t overshadowed by a bunch of stunts.” – Gary Indiana
[March 29 2015] : Television
Gary Indiana TV Takeover / Hannah Arendt interview by Zur Person
“Near the end of this interview, Hannah Arendt says something extremely important about the political impotence of intellectuals, and why, after 1933, for a long time, she wanted nothing to do with them. Although world circumstances today are rather different, I think her observations are well-applied to recent phenomena like ISIS vis-a-vis “the developed world,” civilization, etc. And Arendt’s insistence on making careful distinctions between one idea and another, throughout this interview and throughout her writing, is becoming less and less evident in the era of flash mobs and computers. We need to unplug. And think.” – Gary Indiana
[March 27 2015] : Television
Gary Indiana TV Takeover / Tracey Emin Artist Talk at MCA by MCA Australia
“Tracey Emin’s recent talk at MCA in Sydney, Australia is one of the most brilliantly lucid and engaging artists’ talks in recent memory. All artists are egotists, and Tracey is no exception; the exceptional thing is her obvious sincerity and clarity of purpose. You don’t need theory or dense filters of exegesis to connect with her work, which sets it apart from the general run of things that predominate in the art world currently.” – Gary Indiana
[March 26 2015] : Television
Gary Indiana TV Takeover / Philosopher John Gray at Zurich.Minds- The Dangers of Faith in Progress by Zurich.Minds
“There are literally two John Grays: one is the best-selling pop psychologist who wrote Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. The one you should pay attention to is the other John Gray, a philosopher who teaches at the London School of Economics. Here he takes apart a widespread modern belief that, despite such setbacks as wars and economic catastrophes,, the human race is inevitably evolving towards a condition of Utopian harmony. ” – Gary Indiana
[March 23 2015] : Television
Gary Indiana TV Takeover / What is a Rhizome? Kluge and Vogl on Deleuze and Guattari by Prime Time Spatausgabe
“This conversation between Alexander Kluge and Joseph Vogl is an example of hundreds of generative, playful, wide-ranging Prime Time programs Kluge has produced every week since the mid-1980s, having shrewdly secured licenses for the 10-11 pm slot on two German television stations at a time when the value of this media real estate wasn’t widely recognized. In the “1% of dissonance” within the dominant discourse that Kluge thus guaranteed, he has interviewed people in every conceivable profession, not just intellectuals, artists, poets, economists and others in rarefied cultural and scientific fields — the subject of one of my favorite programs is the chef of the Berliner Ensemble cantina. We all take in more than we... Read More
[March 25 2015] : Television
Gary Indiana TV Takeover / Louis C.K. – Bad Friends by The Comedy Store 2015
“Even though it’s not the Golden Age of anything else in the United States, the country’s self-oblivious decline into irrelevance in the world has produced a great era for American comedy. Comedians are true artists, born not made. They cut through the grease of society’s sacred hypocrisies and awfulness. (And, as Dennis Miller’s routines have demonstrated for years, there is no such thing as a funny right-wing comic.)” – Gary Indiana
[March 28 2015] : Television
Gary Indiana TV Takeover / Tig Notaro – UnCabaret by Tig Notaro
“I really can’t explain why I find this so hilarious, but anything Tig Notaro does leaves me helpless.” – Gary Indiana
