“The consumer is being consumed”

This video clip from 1973 is an oldie but goodie. New York Magazine recently profiled sculptor Richard Serra, who is currently the subject of a new 40-year retrospective exhibit at MoMA. Anyway, I’m always interested in the early work of an innovator, rather than the later, mature work. What were the ideas and inspirations that later led to ground-breaking innovation? Thus, when New York Magazine referred to thissix-minute video clip (“Television Delivers People”) as an early “anti-corporate video screed” from Serra, I was intrigued. Thirty years before the launch of Web 2.0, Serra apparently foresaw the need for a New Media movement to wrest power away from the big media empires:

“Produced in 1973,

“Television Delivers People” is a seminal work in the now

well-established critique of popular media as an instrument of social

control that asserts itself subtly on the populace through

“entertainments,” for the benefit of those in power – the corporations

that mantain and profit from the status quo. Television emerges as

little more than a insidious sponsor for the corporate engines of the

world.”

Trust me, you’ll never watch TV in the same way again…

[video: Television Delivers People]