THE VOID (T.V.) is a research project on tactical video and an audiovisual publishing venue for practice-based research.
Due to its experimental nature, T.V. is not comprised of (and probably will never be) a defined set of methods and practices. This is a quick overview of the project’s different messy and overlapping shapes and scopes since its beginning in 2022.
On Air
Phase 3 (2024-Ongoing)
Phase 3: T.V. is a research project on tactical video and an audiovisual publishing venue for practice-based research. Hybridity and collectivity are essential for the way T.V. functions: we propose to reframe modes of media production into collective acts of broadcasting. By setting up hybrid pop-up streaming studios, we merge production, distribution and archiving into a single event. We think of doing things and learning while doing as an active form of research. In order to practice audio-visual criticality, our streams display the on-site social and technical infrastucture and all its glitches.
We see our hybrid pop-up studios as tactical video: borrowing from the production and distribution methods of independent television, with THE VOID T.V. (Tactical Video) we want to explore the possibilities of online video streaming to create regular events. Rather than depicting events, with this series of broadcasts, THE VOID will manufacture events. Bringing back the ambitions of tactical media, during these broadcasts video will become a space for gathering, making alliances, conspiring, and creating networks of solidarity. This hybrid space is open for monthly collaborations with activists, researchers, and artists interested in exploring the tactical possibilities of video. We aspire for this regular programming to be our node of an incipient distributed network of self-organized streaming practitioners. A TV of the commons or StreamArt cooperative sharing goals, strategies, and technical infrastructure.
Read full TELETEXT | T.V. Manifesto
From Rec to Air
Phase 2 (2023- 2024)
T.V. is a research project by the Institute of Network Cultures that aims to explore, experiment, and expand publishing for practice-based research.
During this phase we set ourselves the goal to practice online video differently. We started to consider the different moments that comprise online video (pre-producing, shooting, editing, distributing, viewing, and online archiving) as a series of opportunities to come together and figure out how to inhabit online spaces with vulnerability and solidarity. We began to play with the idea of video as an event foregrounding the asynchronous hybrid togetherness of the online experience. For THE VOID, video became a hybrid event, an occasion to pollute online spaces with offline encounters and, vice versa, to rearrange how we physically exist together mainly through the tool of the studio. Drawing from online video streaming and alternative publishing, we began to experiment with pop-up studio and zines to produce occasions for sharing and plotting common urgencies, resources, and know-how.
Audio-Visual Podcast
Phase 1 (2022-2023)
Phase 1: T.V. is an audio-visual podcast by the Institute of Network Cultures. Inspired by the language and aesthetics of video podcasting, during this initial phase our output consisted of pre-recorded and post-produced interviews on critical media theory, cultural workers’ labor organizing, and online artistic practices. Every episode was published with an accompanying repository of audiovisual assets to be freely downloaded and repurposed by viewers.