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[REVIEW
> GUTTERVISION]
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| 04/09/2001 |
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| Artist
Dana Mogoven's work featured on "Guttervision" |
"Guttervision"
is highly recommended viewing for anyone interested in the underrepresented
or wholly ignored who explore the fringes of creative expression. |
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Reviewed by D. Dammet
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| Back in the early nineties, I got a job
in a bakery with no previous experience in baking. So
I would sample my muffins and cookies and brownies as
soon as I pulled them from the big ovens to check if they
came out right. My quality control efforts taught me that
with a burned tongue, I couldn't taste much of anything
at all. It took Liz, the manager of the bakery, to explain
that the only way to judge the food was to wait for it
to cool off. "Even shit tastes good warm," she said. |
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| Liz was right. We gobble down the prevailing crap fed
to us by mainstream television without a care as to whether
it is actually shit or not. Have we forgotten how to taste?
Or is the never-ending selection of fresh goodies just
a bit too narrow for us to distinguish between sweet and
savory, between sugar and shit? |
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| "Guttervision" doesn't taste good at all.
A cable television show more interested in subverting
the sickly sweet flavor of the half-baked shit that fill
the channels, "Guttervision" doesn't need to
taste good, because this self-described "high defiance
television" show is not about pleasing the senses as much
as striking a nerve. |
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Various
music videos, short films and works from artists and
filmmakers on the fringe are featured in "Guttervision"
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| Each episode, about a half an hour in length, is comprised
of roughly six segments showcasing a variety of creative
endeavors and the people who create them. There are animated
bits, music videos, poetry readings, performance art actions,
and interviews with artists. Sometimes amusing, sometimes
disgusting, but always thought-provoking, "Guttervision"
documents the workings and playing of creative freaks
and geniuses swept into the unseen darker corners of our
tweezed, plucked and implanted mass media. The only characteristic
the showcased artists, poets, performers tend to have
in common is that they are almost all too marginal or
radical or disturbing to be represented by mainstream
television. |
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| "Guttervision" struck me as a twisted variety
show, a Laugh-In for manic-depressives who don't want
their Prozac. You cannot anticipate what you will see.
In one episode, Bob Flanagan, the late performance artist
known for sadomasochistic explorations like driving a
nail through his penis, discusses his bodily form of creative
expression and how the painful cystic fibrosis (that ultimately
killed him) both inspired and informed his work. In that
same episode, you can see a music video featuring the
Misfits that looks like a sequel to The Night of the Living
Dead, complete with a little flesh eating. After watching
"Fruit Cake," a segment by Huck Botko documenting the
making, baking and presentation of a Christmas fruit cake
with down-right emetic ingredients, I found myself reminiscing
about the last scene in John Waters' "Pink Flamingos."
Until that infamous scene with Divine, never had I seen
anything that compares to that sublime eradication of
all things tasteful for the purpose of entertainment,
nor did I figure there would come along a worthy successor
to administer that kind of shock. But things have changed
because now there's "Guttervision", and there
is a possibility that "Guttervision" can do
to television what John Waters did to the movies. |
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And "Guttervision" is a welcome change, indeed.
Producer Frank Czajka calls "Guttervision" "a
riddle, wrapped up in a mystery, inside an amoeba" and
with any luck this amoeba will clean out the bowels of
mainstream television with a touch of dysentery. "Guttervision"
is highly recommended viewing for anyone interested in
the underrepresented or wholly ignored who explore the
fringes of creative expression. Browse around www.guttervision.com
to find out when the next episode will air on cable..
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| Guttervision will be broadcasting in
Los Angeles area beginning April. 2001: |
| HOLLYWOOD: MEDIA
ONE, MONDAYS @ 11:30PM |
| WEST LA: CENTURY
CABLE, MONDAYS @ 11:30PM |
| EAST VALLEY: TCI,
WEDNESTDAYS @ 8:30PM |
| WEST VALLEY: CVI,
TUESDAYS @ 11:00PM |
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GUTTERVISION
is seeking submissions from artists and short filmmakers
for its on-going shows
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| e-mail & send stuff to producer Frank
Czajak: |
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P.O. BOX 16343N
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Hollywood, CA 91615
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(818) 753-6668
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