Over three days of the 5th edition of /si:n/ Festival for Video Art and Performance, the Gossip TV collective presented a live YouTube stream on a large screen at the Ottoman Court building in the old city of Ramallah. The content combined poetry readings, comic news, a variety of dialogues, music and experimental video.
Gossip TV is a joint art work by American video artist Blake Shaw, Mahmoud Matar, Varvra Abdul Razeq, Amjad Khalil, Wafa Mar’i, Rashad Shehadah, Mohammed Habash, Mohammed Khamis, and Malak Affounah. Gossip TV seeks to subvert the culture of mass image consumption.
The idea of Gossip TV project saw the light in a training workshop organised by the Public Programme (PP) of the A. M. Qattan Foundation (AMQF). In partnership with the Ramallah Municipality, the workshop was held at Hoash Qandah in April 2017. Curated by Shaw, the training targeted a group of artists, filmmakers and actors. It revolved around a simple green screen studio that would be constructed at Hoash Qandah of the Ramallah Municipality.
In the workshop, participants worked on creating a video-art based alternative TV channel, which combined video art and visual poetics to support Palestinian daily struggle and resistance against the Israeli occupation.
Malak Affounah, a curator of Gossip TV, stated that participation in /si:n/ Festival for Video Art and Performance was an extension of the workshop and would go on later. According to Affounah, Gossip TV is an online TV channel. It is developing in the direction of presenting a critical, revolutionary and resistant content that is both audio and visual. Gossip TV aims to subvert the stereotypical image of official or commercial TV. Most performances are live, without any preparations or adjustments.
“We seek to proceed in the same way, but at the same time improve the quality of work in terms of content, theme, visual material and form of art. We look to attract a larger number of participants.” Wafa Mar’i, a curator of the project, stated.
Addressing significance of the project, PP Director Yazid Anani, said that this collective presented a form of self-reliance in the context of spreading its ideas. “It shows a critique of society through a new method of art. Most performances are screened live on YouTube and Facebook. Performances will be move around coffee shops in Ramallah, storming into the public space and changing the view of traditional TV.” Anani concluded.
The 5th edition of /si:n/ Festival for Video Art and Performance ran for four days, from 12 to 15 June 2017. The festival was organised in partnership between cultural and artistic institutions in the central Palestinian cities of Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Gaza. A selection of video art installations, performances and film screenings by noted local and international artists were exhibited in these cities.