“The Telethon is a machine just asking for money but you don’t know what it’s for. “It represents a hideous reality that underlies everything,” Maimon explains. One of the more absurd segments is the Telethon, in which unsubstantiated pleas for money become more and more abstract and uncanny. Christine Hill is not a video artist so, in her case, she collaborated with Ethan Hayes-Chute to make the video for her ongoing project Volksboutique.” A lot of her work is in private space this one is shot in her apartment and you can hear her directing, so it’s quite a beautiful way to enter her practice. Keren Cytter sent us behind-the-scenes material. “Jeremy Shaw sent us parts of a well-known project that he wasn’t able to use in the final cut. “We asked for some form of exclusivity in the sense that what they submitted hadn’t been online before in the same format,” Maimon tells me. The first block of programming also features segments by Keren Cytter, Jeremy Shaw, and Christine Hill. Each spot concludes with the deceptively upbeat tagline: “Always a Dull Moment.” The product, a USB-friendly media player for galleries, armed like a Trojan horse with Dullaart’s own work, is described as “awkward consumer electronics made in South China, under pressure to deliver on time.” In the commercial, a 3D model of a DullTech-branded airplane is visualized from different angles, flying through the sky, as a bubbly American voice reassures us that this is merely art masquerading as business. After the unexpected success of a Kickstarter campaign last year, the Berlin-based artist Constant Dullaart launched DullTech, the company featured in his ad spot. Like the name of the channel itself, commercial segments between programs submit advertising jargon to a biting mockery they use and abuse the rhetoric of neoliberal tech start-ups. They invited trusted friends and creatives Hayes-Chute, Howard, and Maimon to realize the enterprise. Calero and Kline, owners of the Berlin project space Kinderhook and Caracas-which is presently headquarters of the TV network-were looking for ways to expand the reach of their artist community beyond the purview of regimented gallery openings and subsequent documentation. The impetus behind CONGLOMERATE’s project was to take the exclusive visibility of and interaction with artworks out of the gallery setting, and to offer a platform for artists to present new content in an uninterrupted and accessible format. Scenes from Desde el Jardín-the set of which featured in Calero’s April exhibition in at David Dale Gallery for Glasgow International-recur throughout the block, punctuated by desire, death, and suspenseful to-be-continueds. Adhering to the essential tropes of soap operas worldwide, the domestic workers (the eyes and ears of the household) dust haphazardly around the house of femme fatale Jennette, acting as speechless signifiers of the family’s wealth and influence.
Calero’s distinctive aesthetic dominates the set design, with brightly colored tropical interiors and costumes setting the tone for a narrative unfolding almost entirely by way of dramatic looks and overt sexual innuendo.
It begins with a telenovela, Desde el Jardín, written by Calero and Maimon. The entire 30-minute block-launched on May 11th-proves to be a feat of comedic genius, with radically different artistic approaches melding gracefully into one holistic product.
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