A video art clown show.Purchase College SUNYVisual ArtsBachelor of Fine ArtsOwens, Rache

Geissinger, Hex

English

SUNY Open Access Repository

My Senior Project can be viewed on my Youtube Channel “Hex’s Pirate Radio” under the title“Public Access Clown Hour Pilot Episode”Hex Geissinger’s Thesis Paper:“Buy stocks and bonds!” the tv says to us. “Buy the soups and the spuds! Buy rug cleanerand dog cleaner and hair grower and remover!” We watch this stuff because we like it, and weare adults, and we are making informed decisions with all the information available, andavailable it is. Twenty four hours a day and seven days a week, or wherever you have a moment.Here is an actress, and here is an actor and here is how they behave, and you the Viewer know,because you have seen this program before, how you should behave. Here is a body bleeding onthe evening news, here is the outcry here is the backlash, and here is the body, still bleeding,pinging into living rooms across this great nation. Everyone watches the same thing, and sooneveryone becomes their own expert and their own paparazzo. Things are bad, and the box (wires,metal, components), allows us to see the horrors up close and in technicolor.Television, and the human body coexist as a perfect parasite host symbiosis. Perfect inthe scientific and mathematical sense, but not necessarily moral. America invented the televisionset, and through complex systems of infrastructure and capital the television set has infestedevery living room in the nation. The system is simple, an American sits before the television, andthen americans in another part of the nation use advanced equipment to broadcast a signal pickedup by the television, then soon enough, the American watching the television will see a changestart to emerge in themselves. They will sit up a little straighter, they will become intentlyfocused, and then, slowly but surely, they will find that they have achieved a state known toscientists as the “American Dream”, in short, they have been entertained.Clowns exist to entertain the masses the way the television does, but unlike the inanimatebox of a television clowns can live and breathe and fight back. Clowning is an ancientprofession, and clowns command a certain level of respect because of this tradition. Clownsoperate their acts around the concept of power. A clown will always make themself the butt ofthe joke, but in doing so they claim a power over the audience. They are letting the audiencelaugh at them and commanding their attention fully. Ultimately however, the clown remains anoutcast, but this does nothing to diminish their power. In the “real world”, when the television isoff and the circus has ended, the outcast is unable to reclaim their power, the specific frameworkwhich allows the clown to command the audience so effortlessly is gone. What is to be done inthat case, if one is an outcast with no audience? How can power and agency be reclaimed bythose of us who do not have it? If the answer is the entertain, then how can one find an audience?Finally the ultimate question, how can the average person become the one being broadcast, andnot just the consumer?The theme park is what happens to a tv signal when you stretch it out to cover a moderateplot of land, and then charge admission. Notorious antisemite Walt Disney was making TV thesecond he broke ground in Anaheim, taking the corporate perfection approach to the holymanifestation of TV. Later he took his enterprises to Florida, where people were quick to tune inand then to imitate. What Disney was looking for was simple, manifestation of capital, but whathe stumbled into was a gateway into Total Immersion. He took the video media and createdshrines to it, however his Holy Manifestation is ultimately a failure. Every temple Disney hasever created serve one god and one god only, the god of Capital. Perfect Art will never exist ofcourse, yet it is inherent to the pursuit of art that we strive for it. Art created purely in the serviceof this god will never achieve anything besides the creation of capital, and no matter how closelyit may resemble something else, it will never truly be free. However all is not lost, and perhapsDisney does deserve some credit, because without his influence the art that exists 20 minutes orso out from Disney World would never have existed. This art too exits to generate Capital, butbecause it is less successful in its pursuit sometimes the real world is able to slip in the cracks.Mini golf courses, with sun faded dinosaurs and pirates, fiberglass Marylin Monroe gift shops,theming, worship, and the corner mounted CRT television observing it all. This is where the godsbeing worshiped become less clear, and a bit more human.We have established that Disney World is a temple to Disney's own visual video media,but what other kinds of TV Temples are there? Is it even possible to attempt a physicalmanifestation of TV without comparable resources? In short, what would a Public Access DisneyWorld look like, and has such a thing ever existed? Public access of course still operates withincapitalism and its influences make a undeniable difference in the programming, but PublicAccess is a step in the right direction which makes it worth asking these questions of. MostPublic Access shows are one or two people who have a message of some sort that they feel isimportant enough to broadcast publicly. Sometime these messages are overtly religious,sometimes they are political, sometimes they are the product of boredom or a simple desire toentertain, but they always involve an individuals passion, and are a cry into the darkness of theairwaves, “Here I am, a person just as you are a person, and all I ask is that you watch a little.”If we think of Public Access in this way, it becomes clear that there do indeed existphysical places devoted to these principles, as well as this form of expression. A man arrangingstones in his yard into a monolith to his own god, his life's work. We have all heard the stories ofjanitors whos relatives discover their art upon their death, maybe obsessive drawings coveringevery wall, or objects created meticulously from what they had on hand. Devotion exists in theseartists the way it exists on the Public Access airwaves, and this devotion is the key to whatdifferentiates Television from Public Access Television.When a person watches television all their life, and then suddenly has their owntelevision program the perspectives twist. The viewer becomes the broadcaster, and we become atertiary audience member, watching ourselves in the reflection of the screen. Like theperformance of a clown, the power suddenly changes. The tool of the television, which is usuallyonly used for certain means and ends suddenly shifts and becomes a force for self expression.Just because art can embrace new technology we shouldn’t abandon traditional methodsof making. Like how letterpress printing exists as an art form beyond its natural utilitarianlifespan so too should the Public Access television program. Of course we are not quite to theletterpress stage when it comes to public access. Me and my friends like to get high and watchthe Manhattan Neighborhood Network which is available over the web, and hosts a wide varietyof shows, from religious debate to “Rump Shake”. Part of the appeal of public access is themixed bag, and because it is relatively easy for anyone to have a show it gives you an unfilteredview into what people want to make, and there is something deeply authentic about publicaccess. In the age of the internet of course, it is very easy to put yourself out there online forpublic consumption, but there are some fundamental differences between a platform likeYouTube and Public Access television. One is the lack of hierarchy, YouTube is based aroundnumbers and popularity, and despite being user generated most content people end up seeing isquite polished and somewhat professional. It is difficult to find more amateur content on theplatform, and while the barrier to entry is low, the barrier to success on the platform is high.Public access television on the other hand has no barrier to entry and no measure of success.There is virtually no way to make money with public access and your viewership is local to yourown city or community.The world is not always a safe and welcoming place for everybody, and the greed of theworld is all around us, seeping into every facet of our lives. I do not think Public Access alonewill save us, or that it even operates totally outside of greed and selfishness, but I think it isimportant to notice and dwell on the good things left in the world. The human spirit lives incommunity, and in expression, and in the making of art for the sake of art. Television can be aforce for good despite everything, and the world we surround ourselves with is ours alone tocreate.

Public Access Clown Hour

https://soar.suny.edu/bitstream/20.500.12648/15069/1/7919_Hex_Geissinger.pdf

Public Access Clown Hour

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