texts

VIDEO - TELEVISION

It is important to see video and television as two different types of media, even if they are based on the same technology and many video makers work at least partly for television. For me, video has always been both: a way to realise documentary and/or artistic projects independently - and cheaply compared to film - and a way to make television. There are always three different strands of ‘video tradition’: the political ‘video movement’, video art and specific forms of TV, from news to game shows. With dogfilm, we have deliberately not decided in favour of one of these strands, but have always tried to decide which form makes sense to us based on the topic. Many of our videos are strange hybrids between documentary and artistic forms (whatever these terms actually mean...). Documentary-journalistic forms in particular stand for a certain claim to truth, but in our opinion they are only one perspective among many, and sometimes you can say much more about a topic with material from feature films or adverts than with interviews, or something only emerges from the combination. What we have always tried to do is to thematise the place of television in our work by quoting certain structures or using documentary TV material or advertising in a different way, editing it and placing it in a different context. 

I think it should be added that the structures in television are not fundamentally different from those in the so-called ‘art operating system’ or at universities. You have to deal with power structures and hierarchies if you want to intervene in an existing distribution system. This can be very frustrating under certain circumstances, e.g. if you have to make compromises, but on the other hand the distributor tv reaches a few more people than the usual and important reference group. It would be ideal to find a balance between presenting the work in a temporary autonomous zone (thanks Hakim Bay for your text on autonomous zones), where feedback would play a dominant creative role, and intervening in existing distribution systems, where the aim should already be to change the socio-political attitude. Parties are celebrated among themselves, guerrillas are waged against enemies. Admittedly perhaps a little too polemical, but the discussion about where you are, in the periphery or in the centre or maybe on an island in the centre, is topical for me. 

WHICH VIDEOS FOR WHOM?

As long as you don't have access to TV structures that are difficult to understand, the question doesn't even arise. You simply make videos and hope to be able to show them to as many people as possible. And then at some point someone comes along and says: How about reaching 5 million people instead of 50?

(We've never had that many before; Kanal 4 has around 100,000-300,000 people watching, but nobody knows how many of them have already fallen asleep because the Kanal 4 programme often doesn't start until midnight...)

In the beginning it wasn't a problem for me at all, it was just great. But at some point I started asking questions like: Why do you actually get so little feedback on TV programmes? How does someone watch my film who has already seen ten others in contrast to the other 50 who come to an event? And then, of course, the first experiences with censorship in terms of content and form and the strange compromises you have to make in order to be allowed to make your film. That's why our mood at the moment is more towards continuing to make television films, but not at any price and not exclusively. There are films/projects that we absolutely want to make, even though and precisely because they are not TV-compatible in terms of subject matter, form or both. 

Unintentionally, an image like ‘they only make television’ comes across. But our starting point was and still is content and only secondarily form. The question of the medium and in which context you position it follows from the question of which discourse you want to publish and not the other way round. It becomes confusing when the subject of the discourse is the medium itself.

WHICH TELEVISION THEN?

From all the discussions about different forms of television that we have worked on or thought about, the desire has actually arisen to develop a form in which we can look at the topic together with different people from different perspectives, as equally and non-hierarchically as possible. Not a magazine that throws a term into the round every month, to which thousands of exposés are then submitted and the High Council, the editorial team, then decides what is realised and what is not. Rather a ‘series’ of several thematically subdivided programmes that are developed jointly by the respective group of authors who come together on a topic, but still have a common superstructure in terms of content and form. All forms must be able to appear on an equal footing, but not equally (a bit of reportage, a bit of art, a bit of staging, which actually excludes everything that is really interesting and makes no sense in terms of content).

And finally use the opportunity to no longer see television as a mere series of finished products. If you are in control of the content and decide together which aspect is still missing or how the dramaturgy of a programme develops, you can also work much more with fragments, snippets, raw material, e.g. pieces from unedited interviews, etc.. But of course there are few broadcasting slots for this on (German) television, ARTE with its themed evenings could at least be interesting for individual topics, but it has the strict requirements of the public broadcasters and you always have to include the reference to France. We find it stupid to simply write off ARTE as a channel of the cultural bourgeoisie until we have tried to place other forms there. The same (apart from the reference to France) also applies to 'Das kleine Fernsehspiel’ at ZDF.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to make unusual programmes on Kanal 4 because the contracts expire in 1998 and only a few shareholders still claim to make ‘different’ television, at least in terms of content. 

Open channels with fixed broadcasting times would actually be great, but there's just no money. Nevertheless, I would like to continue thinking about how to make a totally unpretentious, raw, cheap television programme for the Open Channel that deals with local reality (e.g. in Berlin).

COUPLING TV WITH THE ‘REAL’ WORLD...

I sometimes think to myself when I spend hours in front of the TV that every programme, every film, involves a huge amount of people who have worked on it and at least some who have put their heart and soul into this programme that I'm watching because there are twenty others. When you then think about your own work, you're no longer surprised that you always have the feeling that it disappears into nothingness when it's on TV. We have always thought about how we can tie television back to local forms of publicity, such as events. Then the broadcast is only part of a direct public discussion in which other forms such as actions, installations, lectures, but also background material from the research or individual pieces of raw material such as full-length interviews can be made accessible. Unfortunately, we have never really tried this out yet.

(not true: e.g. IG Farben (1))

... AND WITH A ‘VIRTUAL’ WORLD

If you think about how you can undermine the product character of videos produced for TV, i.e. also make research and background material publicly accessible, you quickly come to the question of whether this makes any sense at all in classic TV, i.e. the one-dimensional broadcasting of information, or whether you don't have to think about such forms on the Internet. The interesting thing could be that people would then not only have the opportunity to access things, but also to work with them themselves.

Yes, we have our problems with the term ‘virtual’. When we talk about the internet, we are dealing with a reality that is no less real than that of television. As a contribution to the prevailing confusion, I would like to briefly quote Wolfgang Schirmacher in ‘Culture On The Brink’: ‘Are we using the wrong terms? According to William Safire, language watchdog of the New York Times, the once influential term ‘artificial’ has been dismissed because it means ‘fake’ in English, and ‘virtual’ has become the new buzzword because it reads ‘almost’. This would certainly meet the much lesser expectations we have in this field nowadays: ‘almost’ life, ‘almost’ reality, ‘almost’ intelligence would leave our traditional worldview intact, merely adding new layers to it’. 

RAW MATERIAL ARCHIVE

The idea of making video material available on the Internet also goes in the direction of setting up a raw material archive in which as many video producers as possible ‘store’ all their raw material and which is then automatically accessible to others, preferably free of charge. This could create a huge pool of material, especially from the independent video sector. At the moment, many images/interviews are shot over and over again, the broadcasters' archives are categorically closed as long as you don't pay a lot of money and the so-called “image banks” charge as much as €500. ‘image banks’ even charge 500 per shot. In addition, many topics do not even appear in such professional archives for political or media effectiveness reasons. But most small independent video groups, who have perhaps been working on certain topics and collecting material for years, don't know anything about them. The raw material archive could also facilitate contacts between people working in similar areas.

COPYRIGHT 

All thoughts about how to make raw material or even entire videos more widely available are always thwarted by the issue of copyright, at least when producing videos for TV. As an author (and even as a commissioned producer only to a limited extent), you have no rights to your own material. Theoretically, even the surplus raw material would have to be destroyed after approval. Even during production, you are constantly confronted with the problem that you are not allowed to sample on TV, i.e. you have to buy the rights for every snippet from other films. The knowledge of this naturally influences the entire working method from the outset and an important component of at least our video work is thus reduced to a minimum in television productions.

I wonder why the copyright issue is at least discussed in the area of text - especially with regard to texts on the Internet - and in the area of music, but in TV we pretend it doesn't exist. However, given the unbelievable sums involved in TV rights, especially for feature films, it is no wonder that this law is being upheld. 

A CHANNEL OF OUR OWN

The idea of having your own channel in the future forest of specialised television naturally sounds tempting at first. One could finally - as the ‘free’ radios have been doing for decades - counter TV, which up to now has mainly been oriented towards theoretical majority concepts (the audience share) or the favourite environment of its advertising customers, with one or more models that politically and formally perhaps only appeal to so-called minorities, but also embody a kind of television that would not be possible elsewhere. Minorities politically and formally, but also embody a form of television that would not be possible elsewhere. But somehow the idea that at some point everyone will be making TV for their own reference group is also absurd. What I enjoy about TV are the soap operas, the game shows and so on. If there was also other TV. And on the same channels. For us, intervening also means consciously getting involved in the channels that many people watch. In this respect, Kanal 4's concept of suing for a window on RTL and SAT 1 in court was a good one. Or Kluge's programmes, which always break in somewhere you wouldn't expect. The only problem is that these ‘disruptors’ in German TV also create closed systems that are difficult to access from the outside (Kluge) or are slowly coming closer and closer to ‘real’ television (Kanal 4). With all the various possibilities of special-interest TV, I think at the moment we would prefer to have a broadcasting slot on one of the big channels that we can use without any restrictions. But maybe that's more utopian than having our own channel...

I actually wanted to write in between and add things or make comments, but you've actually already said pretty much everything we've talked about. I think the biggest problem with making television is that of your own autonomy. It starts with the fact that you first have to get in touch with editors who have to be convinced that what you're trying to do is really good. And then, of course, they also want to get involved somehow - otherwise they would be superfluous. And even if you are allowed to do it, you still have to deal with countless bureaucratic and legal hurdles.

But the worst thing, of course, is the given time limit. Either it restricts my freedom of thought in approaching a topic right from the start or I still work as broadly and openly as I think is important and then it gets sorted out and thrown away again during editing. And as you've already noted, the raw material belongs in the rubbish, research, creation process and development are irrelevant. Without a product, there is simply no television. There's another thing I don't like about making videos or television: that it always takes so long. First you think, then you plan and shoot, then you edit. And with every step, my relationship to the original idea changes and slowly becomes a film. Which is great in a way, of course. But in the finished product you see far too little of all the forwards, backwards, hooking and sorting out. And you can't respond to anything spontaneously and in real time. That's why it's so important to understand video more as a documentation medium again and not (only) publish the collected material in the finished film, but to use it as material for events, discussions, etc. And at this point, a permanently installed location on the Open Channel would be important to establish a local connection to the real living space (because we don't just happen to live in Berlin), in order to draw attention to events, campaigns, discussions, etc. in the city from there or to organise them ourselves.

That actually sounds good. What's missing is functioning cooperation with other groups and individuals. And if we hadn't just had 5 years of group work with the BOTSCHAFT behind us, great at times and then disillusioning again, then perhaps I would now have an answer as to how the whole thing could be put into practice. But I don't have that. On the contrary, at the moment I feel much more of a need to think and reflect before jumping into the next action. And that no longer just has something to do with the medium of video and the place of television, which is what we have mainly been dealing with in the last three years. It's more about how you can go your own way without being taken over by the existing structures. So how far can I work autonomously and where do I have to make compromises? And it makes almost no difference whether I make television, am in the art market, receive grants or have a job. The illusion of autonomy is always only temporary and the external pressure becomes more tangible. And that's where the group context doesn't always help me, because it's constantly at risk anyway when individuals establish themselves in positions and ‘group’ also means ‘niche’ at the same time and everything in the circle of ‘artists, creatives and others’ also only revolves around themselves. What we in the BOTSCHAFT/dogfilm circle are doing at the moment is thinking about what place we actually want to occupy with our work - regardless of the medium - and how we can manage to realise ideas in the future as independently as possible and yet not isolated from the ‘rest of the world’ and then also enter into a - however ‘public’ - debate. One event that we dogfilmmakers at least have high hopes for in this context is the mammoth ‘Next 5 Minutes’ event, which takes place in Amsterdam and Rotterdam in January and is subtitled ‘Tactical Media’. Until then, we'll keep thinking...

A lot has already been said above about raw material etc.. I think that's one of the funniest things about making television, that the structures you have to deal with are so hermetic that you adopt a way of working that you would never choose for yourself in other areas, such as exhibitions or similar. With BOTSCHAFT, we have always tried to make projects that see themselves as research and function in a process-related way. In television, where everything is subject to the dictates of ‘expensive time’, this is ruled out from the outset. Nevertheless, you are so fascinated that you get involved. In general, the effect and the aura that surrounds television is quite strange. We've been working on a video for ZDF for almost a year now, as part of 'Das kleine Fernsehspiel’. For me, it was absolutely strange what reactions the fact that we were able to do this triggered. ‘I've heard you have a little TV play!’.... That always sounded like: ’I've heard you have an exhibition at....’ That's funny, because I've only met a few people who don't switch over to 'Das kleine Fernsehspiel', simply because it's usually boring as hell or too exhausting. On the other hand, the ZDF logo opens almost all doors for you. During our shoots, almost nobody ever asked ZDF whether we were really working for them, we never had to show a press card or anything like that. That's something you can use very well. Many of the people we wanted to interview didn't really listen when we talked about the topic of the video, they were just happy that the ‘serious ZDF’ was interested in them. They keep telling you that they would react completely differently if you asked for RTL, but ZDF....... Funnily enough, our work for television is much less scrutinised ‘in our environment’ than, for example, who works where/how/with whom ‘on a project’.

One could ask oneself what distinguishes 'Das kleine Fernsehspiel' from some scholarship awarded by some dubious foundation. Above all, because with television, the "influence" on the final product can be much greater and more direct than in the gallery context, which we tend to reject. Compromises on television are more or less accepted, compromises on projects in other contexts are frowned upon. How much "acceptance with structural conditions" can and will one afford - and how much importance or strength do one attribute to one's own project, so that all of this is still in some proportion?

Footnote: (1) 

The example of the IG Farben industry shows how a section of German history that had been shelved today is once again directly confronting us with the National Socialist past. The IG shares promise speculators on the stock exchange a good deal. The main focus of the project was therefore on the current situation of claims for re-transfer of ownership in Berlin. During the series of actions (November 26th - 28th, 1993), the total of 53 properties and buildings were marked with posters containing information about the history and current status of the negotiations. At the same time, a documentary exhibition and a lecture by Hans Frankenthal, a member of the Auschwitz Committee and a former forced laborer who has been in the resistance against IG Farben for 40 years, took place in the BOTSCHAFT event rooms. At the same time, the event was accompanied by articles in daily newspapers. The trigger for the project was a 4-minute television report by dogfilm for the magazine "Z" on the subject of IG Farben. This video was integrated into the documentary exhibition.

Making plans at the spa hotel. The Attorney General, together with his armed bodyguards, applauded our award-winning short video ‘Soap’ and left us with a stale feeling. What should we do next? During a subsequent lively discussion of the dogfilm future, the future in general and the usual group-internal detours..... (what are Allison and Pelle actually doing! / what's your karate course actually doing / I'm fat... you're not... but have a look / I've been thinking about going to Amsterdam again / I need to make a quick phone call / Pelle no!).... we come to two glorious realisations: 1) All five of us would like to do something together again, after we always worked in small groups last year (1995). 2) We still have a lot of fun and ideas on the subject of ‘Soap - or Life is a Soap Opera’ despite the Federal Prosecutor General. - What haven't we done yet? - Ah, a theme night... 3 hours of TV, determine the environment yourself ( ) (here you can enter all the pros and cons, reservations etc. about theme nights)................... Why not give it a try.........

'Soap or Life is a Soap Opera'! What is a project with this title about? Soap, confusion of terms. Daily. Prime-Time. Sitcom. Harvey Ellentuck helps us:

"This is my trusty new "Webster's Third New International Dictionary“. The perfect book for any household, any English speaking household. (...) We find "soap opera“ on page 2160, column 3. The terminology for soap operas is: probably so called from the fact that it was formerly often sponsored by soap manufacturers. And the definition that they have is: a radio or television serial drama performed usually on a daytime commercial program and chiefly charaterized by stuck domestic situations and often melodramatic or sentimental treatment“ 1)

Definition ticked off. SOAP as METAPHOR becomes interesting. Soap as a metaphor for the ultimate serialised television. Soap as a metaphor for a worldwide phenomenon. Soap as a metaphor for the creation of a permanent media reality. A reality that is not a virtual one, but an integrated reality, like reading a breakfast newspaper. And we enjoy losing ourselves in this reality, experiencing the dichotomy between everyday life and projection.

That sounds incredibly intellectually voluntary, the way we lose ourselves in reality... Life is a soap opera is a soap opera is a soap opera?

Another question. Can serialised television move rusty and entrenched social, but also personal, structures?

Where are the soaps that overturn and question everything? Where I really want to know what happens next, not just because Jane saw Jake kissing Alison, but because I simply can't imagine what will become of the situation tonight or tomorrow?

Answer to follow or to be continued... Soap, because feelings and emotions are an essential part of communication, of persuasion. Besides, we all had a great desire to travel. So let's pack our bags!

• Carola

...the joy of travelling ended in kriebethal - after three days in carola's bed...

Kriebetal is like a cheese bell, only the other way round: a valley that looks like a hole that you can never get out of once you've fallen in. Pretty and picturesque and German like a greasy oil painting with a robber baron's castle and winding river, embedded in wooded hills. At four, five, half past five in the morning, awakening from a restless sleep in a strange, foreign marital bed, before us the unbelievable hallucination of a small, fat woman with hydrogen-blonde hair in a kind of pink jogging suit.

‘Like a fairy tale from 1001 nights - love came and you brought it to me!’ 2)

Why didn't anyone tell us that watching someone else's everyday life also means being sucked into a strange universe and not being able to find the exit? Brief moments of panic in the dark. Half an hour later with Carola and her children in front of the TV, she on the couch, her favourite place opposite the TV, from where she watches her favourite series throughout the day. Bonanza while half asleep reminds me of when I was sick in bed as a child. Sledge Hammer is a highlight for her and the kids, but the series is almost over by the time we realise that Susi is the name of a gun. Among Us plays in some convoluted shared flat world and gets mixed up with Good Times, Bad Times, but slowly an inner calm spreads, our radar turns slowly and steadily and records an endless chain of excited dialogues that seem to make sense together. Dallas starts at nine, it's light outside now, but that doesn't matter because we don't want to go there any more. And Carola doesn't like being outside either.

• London ­ - Almaty

It all seemed very simple - clearly structured and a safe journalistic prey: evil English imperialists who, in keeping with their centuries-old tradition, once again wanted to subjugate a region to Christianity and the naked market economy: how to Thatcherise Kazakhstan! On the other side are the poor Kazakhs, whose glorious cultural heritage, the Kazakh film studios, have been subjected to soap opera production. So far, everything seemed clear. Planning: travelling to Kazakhstan, recording interviews with subjugated Soviet (Kazakh) filmmakers, editing images of the crumbling studio building, filming historical footage shot in the film studios - this is where Dziga Vertov, Pudovkin and of course Eisenstein (including Ivan the Terrible) filmed in the 1940s. The whole thing is then contrasted with images from a propagandistic soap opera that aims to introduce the basic concepts of the market economy in Kazakhstan.

Stopover in Frankfurt. Waiting. The Russian dictionary only helps us to realise that we really don't speak any Russian at all. Every word I read is immediately lost and seems to consist only of consonants. The waiting hall slowly fills up with European and Asian-looking people, almost all men, including German, Dutch and American businessmen and journalists. The messengers of progress, technology and information and the messengers of victory over communism. The first time flying with Lufthansa. We eat something with crabs, watch 'Mission Impossible' (!?) and follow on the monitors how a small aeroplane slowly moves eastwards across the globe. Over Warsaw, Minsk, Moscow and then slowly towards the foothills of the Himalayas and China. Names now appear on the map that I last heard in geography lessons: Novosibirsk, Irkutsk and then Almaty.

It seems more interesting to me to go back to the ‘poor, subjugated, Kazakh side’: The boss of the soap opera and the TV station happens to be Dariga Naserbayeva (daughter of the president, who has been in power since 1985). In the interview, she repeatedly emphasised how happy she is that the communists have been chased out of the country... Oh yes, her father is now the 13th richest man in the world according to the business magazine Forbes.

She rushes in, dressed in a haute couture business suit and perfectly groomed like a model, coolly cancels our interview and demands a preliminary talk. We sit down dutifully in rows of three at the reflective conference table, she at the head of the table, the Kazakh flag in front of her as a table pennant. She swears by the ‘American way of life’. She rails against the communists, who have still not been eradicated. She herself studied history at the elite university for party cadres in Moscow - someone else tells us later. She is sad that there is no real opposition in Kazakhstan apart from a few frustrated intellectuals who ‘don't move with the times’. Our contribution to this spectacle is limited to nodding after each translation or asking a - brief - interjection. A crash course in international diplomacy would probably have been appropriate. Three days later, the interview finally took place.

Unfortunately, the English banker was also nice and likeable.

• Köln - ­ München

"But dear colleague..." 3)

Which colleague, please, but to understand that you have to go a bit further... So it's about politics. The political TV series. Since we live in Germany, we have to deal with ‘Lindenstraße’ for better or worse. Tina doesn't, because she thinks ‘Lindenstraße’ just sucks and gets a physical cramp when she sees Mother Beimer. Lindenstraße is really funny. "I think the most terrible thing is this claim to realism. It simply can't be that what you see there is ‘realistic’" (quote from Else Kling). The terrible thing is that this reality is an assertion. Everything that does not occur is thus marginalised as not real (not important) reality. In any case, I don't want to accept that this is supposed to be my reality and if it sometimes actually is, then I don't like it. The political aspirations of ‘Lindenstraße’ manifest themselves above all in the integration of ‘political themes’ into the storyline. There is hardly a current ‘political topic’ that has not appeared in some context in ‘Lindenstraße’, but the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany is never questioned.

‘Nazis, torture, child rearing - old people's homes are a huge topic!’ 4)

It is not the case that all topics are treated ‘badly’ or ‘incorrectly’ or ‘only on a personal level’. We could have told the background about Ken Saro Wiwa's life almost entirely through clips from Lindenstraße with a bit of work. After all, the incarnation of German bourgeoisie, the ‘mother of the nation’ - Mother Beimer, the pregnant Mary from Nigeria, who has to go into hiding after a rejected asylum application, is hiding in her flat between the sofa set and the cuckoo clock. Aside from all the goodwill and the ‘SPD-esque’ compromises of ‘Lindenstraße’, there is actually one question that we asked ourselves at some point to clarify our personal relationship with Lindenstraße: ‘Would you like to live in “Lindenstraße”?’

"No, I wouldn't. I'd rather live in a street that doesn't even exist!" 4)

• Los Angeles - New York - Tijuana

We would never have thought that an interview itself could become a soap opera: It's a sunny November morning in New York, Fifth Avenue. We jump out of the taxi and haul our stuff into one of these shiny office buildings to interview the export manager of Mexican media giant Televisa. Finally, after two and a half hours, we are invited into the inner sanctum. Pedro Fond greets every lady - even us - with a kiss on the hand. He looks like one of the stately Mexican landowners in a modern version: three-piece suit, fat cigar. He is the patriarch of the series' empire and he is very willing to let us mere mortals in on his secret:

"We have one way to doing business and we don't have any change. It's similar to Coca-Cola, one way of product you can never change. We product is basic three points: Number one is family, number two is the romantic and number three is it be entertainment. You sit down in front of TV and you enjoy. Sometimes you cry but you enjoy. Sometimes you suffer, but you enjoy, sometimes you happy, when the girl got it: she marry con the guy - everybody happy in the house and people scream "Ha!" similar con the game show. And this is the secret of Televisa: be very feeling, feeling, feeling between audience and what happen in the novela. It's a very feeling production, sometimes its unbelievable what can doing. And I think this is what Televisa is doing for many years and continue doing!" 5)

Despite skirt and shoes: While kissing hands, Mr Fond caught a whiff of perfume and revealed to Merle and Tina that they are not real ladies.... Clever! Liar!

LouLou ­ c'est moi!

• Melodie

"When we first met and began our art dialogue I told you that the thing that really fascinated me was the thing about the soap operas in our heads. You know and how... people don't even need the screen and the television set to live in a soap opera. You know we make them up all the time.“ "There is an addiction to emotion as in feeling as being meaningful. And when you grow up in an environment like that and you live in a culture like that as well, then you go on producing this. You make things much bigger than they are.“ "And to me it's like a substitute for that emptiness. I feel therefor I am... you know, this is what it means to be alive.“ "The other experience that seems common to me about living the life of the soap opera , the drama, is that having this belief that someday I will live the life that I want. In the meantime it's just playing the movies and playing movies and someday, as if we will be able to go back and do it all over again or as if you'll wake up one day and you look in the mirror and the person in the mirror will be young and will know how to be alive. I mean it's just this dream that we live in most of the time....“ 6)

• New York

New York: 10 days with five of us in a small one-room flat in Williamsburg, Brooklyn / phoning under the duvet or in the loo so as not to wake the others and having to sound incredibly serious and give the other person the feeling that you're sitting on the 38th floor behind a mirrored façade - unfortunately, the noise of the toilet flushing was sometimes disconcertingly loud.

We sit in the Paper Tiger office at night and talk to Loudi, Syrdra, Jenny and Samira about soaps.

"You know with this stuff you can't like back away, you have to go full head first and swim in it." 7)

• Berlin

At home, at work, the Mexican telenovelas have to be watched and recorded. As we have nothing but promotional trailers, the endless stories condense into a concoction of love, jealousy, cheating, illegitimate children and lost haciendas. My consciousness splits, one part of me continues to work on a documentary film about the social and political effects of soap operas, the other detaches itself and drifts into the maelstrom, once again. Music that throws you around emotionally and suddenly gives life the right soundtrack again. I find myself popping the cassette in for the fifth time in a row, supposedly to measure out something I've already done four times. Thank God someone comes by and prevents me from falling seriously in love with Juan del Diablo, the hero from ‘Corazon Salvaje’. Incidentally, this is the one Subcommandante Marcos wrote in one of his letters that if his sketch was true, this novela actor would have to be arrested.

"In Nicaragua, the whole country lived a telenovela: ‘Slave Isaura’, do you remember this Brazilian novela? It was so popular in the first year of the revolution, so it must have been 1981. And Daniel Ortega was president, this Commandante Sandinista who had fought against the dictatorship in the mountains for twenty years, this real guerrilla - and we watched this telenovela, everyone watched it, nobody went to the supermarket because we were all watching ‘Slave Isaura’. And if on Monday in the novela, for example, Isaura was raped by her master or something like that - then the next day President Ortega commented on this programme in the official newspaper ‘Barricada’! Go and have a look at the ‘Barricada’, I'll tell you the truth! So of course his comments were also related to our national problems, but he used the plot of ‘Slave Isaura’ as a hook!" 8)

• Berlin ­ - Los Angeles

I think all dogfilms know that I will of course write something about our trip to LA. I guess I can't help it. Yes, I know. There are only 2 weeks left. Then the metamorphosis must be complete. I'm Jane, a fashion designer from LA, blonde and beautiful. A few years ago I started my own business with my own collection. But I always look for the wrong men. They all set me up. Richard stole my designs the other day and I'm now back in a garage on Melrose Place. But I'm not like I used to be. No longer the nice, naive Jane. The world is a bad place. You have to fight for your career. And that's what I'm doing. At least I managed to put Richard's fashion show under water. Unfortunately, Joe photographed me doing it. So now Richard works for me - Joe blackmailed me.

Melrose Place, that's also: dogfilm sits around the corner in the Indian restaurant and for the first half hour Tina tells Merle what happened yesterday, Philip and Jörg would like to go to the next table and disappear into thin air and Eddie amazes us with his detailed knowledge of the current entanglements.

Who cares... I'm with your great love Jake now. Good, naive Jake. The only one who doesn't scheme. Jake also has a weakness - like all the men in the series, by the way: Jake, but a hot night with Jane's new assistant of all people? Oh, you don't know that yet. Richard set it up to get back at Jane. I think he still loves Jane. Poor Joe. You're going to be written out of Melrose Place next season. That's what Darren Star, creator and writer of Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place and Central Park West, told us. I'm already looking forward to his next project, Sex in the Cities, a comedy about career women in New York in search of men. Oh man, that sounds so incredibly good, I have to watch it! Yes, yes, I know. Of course I do. You're right. US-American cultural imperialism! White, clean, rich America! Superficial bullshit! Okay. But fantasy world or reality? Do you really exist? You, Jake, Jim, Joe, Kelly, Brenda, Brandon, Donna, Aaron, Darren, Amanda, Alison? Beautiful, rich, sun-kissed, for whom life consists only of simple, personal problems? Hollywood, here we come! We want to see you live, get a whiff of your glamour and then become critically happy here in Europe, fulfilled inside! I was constantly bored in LA.

Me too.

And this melancholy despite the sun and the hotel with swimming pool... How do they actually live here? There's nothing here! Simply nothing at all! This is supposed to be everything? This sea of detached houses in the desert? This is L.A. now? My dream city?

Mine too. I always thought there was this place in the world where so much fiction is created that it must inevitably affect reality... Just like there are gaps where subspace suddenly breaks into reality on the Enterprise because an unplanned hole has opened up during an energy experiment and that leads to strange phenomena.

And above all: where are the people here? Is everything really taking place behind closed doors?

"But, ähm, there is a certain, there is a certain reality I think in L.A.. That’s why people come to Los Angeles. They are watching shows like Melrose Place and they think, wow, it’s a beautiful weather and beautiful people and what a great place to live." 9)

Well, it's winter now. That's probably why nobody's at the beach. And it's also Thanksgiving, so all the shops and pubs are empty. And how did we even come up with the stupid idea of strolling along Melrose Avenue on a Monday evening of all days? It's not the weekend! And then ‘strolling’. Noone does that! We do pretty much everything wrong! It's no wonder! We are Europeans after all! At least we have a hire car. Ok. Guitar soft rock and sunglasses are also good. And hair blowing in the wind. I almost feel good already! Oh no!

"I think people who come out here and are searching for that and thinking that’s what they want, yeah, you know, it’s like after a few weeks, sure, but then there’s some other realities about L.A.’s structure and truth and it becomes less desirable." 10)

I don't know. I can't shake the feeling. This promising, pregnant mood. I just have to believe that there's something there. Something behind the smooth façade. There must be something! Or is there?

Maybe no one has told us that when subspace breaks into reality, there is only a vacuum, a yawning emptiness, total nothingness!

What else could I believe in? And all the other series-addicted people in this world. Then everything would just be a hoax. And that simply can't be. It can't be! I watch the series every week, they're all in there. Hey, give me a sign!

"I mean it’s a phantasy for everybody in this country, too." 11)

Maybe we'll go there again in the summer. Yes, that's a good idea. I'm sure everything is completely different in summer...

Hello Jane, why don't you answer the phone, Jane, I know you're confused, your sister told me. I've only just fallen off the balcony and I'm not physically well yet, but you know you can always come and see me at the surgery. I helped Kimberly, so I think I can help you too, in any case we can talk about it first. Bye, Peter

PS: The only collection that has style - I designed it! So long - Richard!

I'm Reed, by the way. I'm blonde, wear T-shirts and jeans and live on a boat that's not registered in California. I actually want to cruise around with tourists, but I'd rather have fun in bed with Joe. It's all great fun and also kind of wild. Of course, underneath the nice surface, I'm a completely different person. I take suitcases and then give them to other people, who give me other suitcases in return. The contents are somehow mysterious. In any case, it's terribly dangerous and completely illegal. I actually died quite quickly. Joe shot me on the boat, which isn't registered in California. At the end, I asked everyone for forgiveness again. I think I looked really good lying there. Somehow I had something that's hard to describe - something unconventional...

• Rewind: Los Angeles - New York - Tijuana

Placesetting: A small detached house in East LA. Loud laughter and a party atmosphere can be heard from inside. We've been invited to a sacred family celebration: Thanksgiving with the Barragan family. We've never met before, only spoken on the phone. Norma and her husband want to show us the Mexican side of LA, make contacts and talk to us about telenovelas and their significance for the Hispanic community in the USA.

"Over there is the immigration building where a lot of people get deported. Their dreams get cut right here, ­ it's a monster ­ but we won them!“ 12)

Norma works as a secretary at the International Institute, Rudolpho is a trade unionist. Both have been active in political community work for years and at times had a bookshop where events, etc. took place. (Hello b_books!) They have quite a few children, who in turn have children and all have one thing in common: They are all fat and have first names of revolutionary origin. (Tanja, after Che's German mistress; Emilio after Emilio Zapata...)

...unforgettable Emilio and Louis' Beavis & Butthead imitation. Cooooooooool.

They are also all super nice and the first ones who don't talk about workouts and beach life all the time. We spend the next few days together and it turns out to be the best days of the whole trip. Norma and Rudolpho take us on a city tour of ‘their’ LA and so we spend the whole day travelling through East LA, downtown and finally to the legendary ‘South Central’ in the Barragan-Mobile. The whole thing is like an alternative city tour, mixing information with all kinds of personal anecdotes. I think that day was the first time I had the impression that it was even possible to get a feel for LA. Tomorrow we want to do an interview with Norma, Tanja and the others about telenovelas. But for now we drive back to the "pavement of fame", fall into bed and dream of changing the world with Norma, Rudolpho, Tanja and all the others while eating lots of turkey and drinking Budweiser. (slow fade-out, perhaps with militant music "el pueblo unido")

• Berlin - Lagos - Port Harcourt

A novelty for us, we had someone fly in for the first time. The interview with Ken Wiwa, journalist at The Guardian, finally works out. Berlin-Tegel, flight from London-Gatwick. The glass sliding doors open and we are greeted by someone who is suffering from his father's fame. He tells us that he has dropped the "Saro" in his name to make it clear that you can't just replace one Ken Saro-Wiwa with another, younger one. He knows that everyone only wants to talk to him because his father is dead. We are no different. Nevertheless, a mutual sympathy is immediately noticeable. Maybe it's because we're the same age. We want to talk to him about his father's soap opera, Mr Basi & Company, and make it clear that we see this work as part of his father's political legacy.

"He always felt that a writer has to reflect society, that was his view of L'homme engage, the writer must be involved in the society. " 13)

Ken Saro-Wiwa's life story reads like a film by Oliver Stone. First a rebel during the Biafra War, then on the side of the government. After the war, he held various political offices in Nigeria. He then switches to business and becomes a successful businessman. Then he remembers his dreams and becomes a writer, founds a publishing house and publishes his own books and then television...

"He remembered his time as minister of culture as he had gone to Cuba and he had seen the power, how the Cuban government used television, seen the power of communication and broadcasting. So the whole thing just merged in let me start a television program , so he started writing." 14)

Basi & Company was a radical television series because it questioned the entire Nigerian political system. We definitely get this confirmation from Ken Wiwa. After an hour, the interview is over and we drive him in the Dogmobile to a friend in Berlin. We quickly drive across Alexanderplatz: Look, this is the Alex, this used to be the centre of East-Berlin. Yes, here used to be the wall. Five minutes of tourism and he's gone. I think, I've been a journalist before, obviously, in the service of the concept, but I've never hated it as much as I do today.

• Ewa

Placesetting: If you imagine the world from above, it's pretty small. If you then get closer and closer, everything looks incredibly pretty and somehow fascinating. Like in one of those montages in the Geo magazine. If you get even closer, you can see three anti-aircraft searchlights. If we penetrate this level, we recognise a room with a couch set, a crate of beer, make-up utensils scattered around and a long-haired blonde woman who notices that we are watching her drink beer, somewhere at latitude x and longitude y and who knows that a bunch of bald men are having a lot of fun below her.

Appearance of a star: arriving - in a red Mercedes - blonde hair and white fur light up the entrance to dreamland, no one lines the steps, a drunk gets a laughing fit. Now into the seething crowd: muffled indifference, someone brutally grabs her hair, the girls shout bitchy remarks behind her. We're standing on a platform and I can look down from above at all the short-cropped heads. As the evening progresses, I notice subtle differences: one third skinheads, two thirds ‘normal’ village youth, who look as if they are in no way inferior to the skinheads in their views. The whole crowd steams in the twitching strobe light and confidently spreads the atmosphere that it is apparently nothing special to gather over a thousand more or less right-wing extremist kids in a disco somewhere between Berlin and Hamburg every week. For us, that's one nightmare. The other nightmare is watching a young woman in a red bathing suit who sometimes looks a bit like Pamela Anderson and wants to become an unforgettable star one day.

21-year-old blonde / works as Pamela Anderson's doule in discos / flirts with old gigolo Rolf Eden in order to win prices at third-class events (Miss Film Festival) / loves David Lynch and would like to be like Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks / because she finds it romantic with the drugs and that she died so young / worked as a go-go dancer with her friend when she was 17 / would never take nude photos, but which are offered to you by various photographers in Berlin / signs autographs at the Potsdam porn fair and lets Rolf Eden drive her around the city in a Rolls Royce.

Her appearance in dreamland is a total flop. We just want to wake up.

This and much more next week! When it's time again... Fade out

Footnotes:

1) Harvey Ellentuck, NYC, protagonist in "Soap around the World / Archive“

2) Famous German pop refrain

3) Hans-Werner Geissendörfer, creator of "Lindenstrasse“ in "Soap aound the World / Köln - München“

4) see 3)

5) Pedro Fond, Televisa, in "Soap around the World / Berlin - Los Angeles - Tijuana“

6) Melody Somers, actress and psychoanalyst, in "My Life is a Soap Opera“ / Part 1

7) Samira / Paper Tiger on Soap Operas

8) Kenia Halleck, dept. "cultural studies“, UC San Diego, about telenovelas in her home country Nicaragua

9) Darren Star, Creator of "Beverly Hills 90210“ and "Melrose Place“ in "Soap around the World / Berlin - Los Angeles

10) see 9)

11) see 9)

12) Norma Barragan, social worker, in "Soap around the World / Berlin - Los Angeles - Tijuana“

13) Ken Wiwa, son of Ken Saro Wiwa, Creator of "Mr. Basi & Company“, in "Soap aound the World / Berlin - Lagos - Port Harcourt“

14) see 13)