Curators Statement

Through a combination of the three common values of television — information, dissertation and entertainment – Media Art Ferry TV naturally develops into a total work unto itself. This facet of the ferry experience is broadcasted into every cabin and periodically on the television monitors throughout the cruise. Programming takes its model from regular television programming. In association with ISEA, AV-ARKKI, the Distribution Center for Finnish Media Art, outlines the daily programming, highlighting the breakfast, mid-day, and late-nite timesluts. Onboard AV-ARKKI’s curators open their cabin up to festival goers, collecting passengers for a private viewing. The invitation is paraded up and down the ferry’s decks, printed directly on the two curators tight pink t-shirts.
Love Boat sets the sails for this sea-bound symposium. The first of three programs offered by AV-ARKKI, it is a mid-day passing of heart throbs and drama. A time to unpack your belongings and leave your own worries on the shore. Primetime centers around political theory and actions carried out. Featured here is a selection from Northern Shipping Broadcast Company, curated by Konrad Becker. As co-founder of Public Netbase, a non-profit internet provider and a platform for the participatory use of information and communication technology, Becker’s short political documentaries are reflections of the role of new media in the political development of a democratic information society. Italy’s REKIMBINANT deliver a glance into the growing world of independent video activism and its role in the new free delivery of information today. With Becker’s on board performance and REKIMBINANT’s respective conference in Tallinn, Ferry Media TV extends and reiterates these pertinent issues at hand.
Late-Nite is characterized by AV-ARKKI’s ELECTRIC SOUND program, broadcasting broken signals and images. Montreal’s Pavilion Projects follows through with a specific broadcast for all the night-owls and invokers aboard. These works close in on the television, a collapsing spectacle and fantasy world programmed exclusively for individual viewing. A mixture of false architecture, Leary and Anger. A midnight congregation.
The Baltic cruises are known for their all night dancing and liberated attitudes. AV-ARKKI starts the next day with TAX FREE, a playful program echoing the festivities from the night before (with Little or no regret). These short videos by Finnish artists offer a moment of light-spirited escape for those just getting up, or those just going to bed.
Representing not only ISEA’s programming concerns but also a wide spectrum of international video art, Ferry Media TV stands a structure unto itself, a full program that upholds the presence of the festival, conveying its independent and uniquely inter¬disciplinary spirit. It offers a personal and private experience, a closed world that skates between concurrent issue within the festival and new visions.

• Robin Simpson & Sarah Steeves, curators