Video

Television Spots

Diane Poitras

1988, colour

TAPECODE 9926

Television Spots are twelve short video tapes designed for transmission among the commercials that interrupt late-nite television in North America. They range in duration from fifteen to thirty seconds, and though a number of them appear to be little more than moving stills, all are able to inhabit time and represent subjects in a manner uncommon in commercial breaks. Ideally only one Spot would be broadcast on any given day though it would be "rotated" numerous times: underlining the either repetitious or unresolved situation that it depicts, and with each reappearance amplifying the affect of the ones that had come before. They acknowledge the condition of repetition and sameness they endure -- even as they suggest a world of detail in excess of their spectacular surroundings.

Television Spots are extremely reticent: they do not attempt to sell anything, they do not attempt to convince anyone of anything, they merely after brief glimpses of uncanny commonplaces that question the canniness of television's discontinuous monologue.

Rental and Sales

Curators and programmers, please contact distribution@vtape.org to receive a login and password to preview Vtape titles online.

Screening and exhibition rentals and archival acquisitions include public performance rights; educational purchases or licenses include rights for classroom screenings and library circulation. When placing an order the customer agrees to our general online terms and conditions. Payment (or a purchase order number) and a signed licensing agreement must be received before media can be shipped to the client.

Critical Writing

Interrupting the program...: descrambling TV through video
by Heidi May. Canadian Art, Summer 2001, v. 18, no. 2.