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TVS01
Television Past and Present
PP 302
Disruptive Histories: Material Cultures of Television Under Socialism
D. Mustata
1
1
University of Groningen, Journalism Studies and Media, Groningen, Netherlands
Discourses associated to socialist television have been invariably contained within consensual narratives wherein the East would be undeniably opposed
to theWest (pre-89) or alternatively, the East would irrevocably aspire to theWest (post-89). These narratives have reiterated the interpretative framework
of the Cold War, attesting de Certeau’s arguments that history as a narrative is linked to the legitimization of political power (1988:287). This has been
conducive to ‘grand narratives of success’and ‘histories of the great men’to the detriment of narratives of discontinuity, contradiction and failure. Such con‑
sensual narratives fit the rationalist framework of institutionalized histories, without giving way to the ‘free-floating’, unfixed’and ‘discontinuous’historical
narratives that remain loyal to the lived past (Hodder, 1986). This has produced ‘modes of knowledge’that exist rather as a whole and do not do justice to
the complexity of discursive and institutional relations that are marked equally by breaks and ruptures as well as by consensus and unity (Foucault, 1972).
These unified and consensual modes of knowledge have produced a manageable past that has reinforced discourses of the powerful and the successful
Western media at the expense of the submissive and downgraded East. This paper goes to the core of these issues and proposes alternative ways of looking
into socialist television histories, so as to relieve them from the consensual interpretative frameworks wherein the binary oppositions between the East and
theWest remain unchallenged. Pleading for a shift from the‘written cultures’of television’s past, embedded within institutionalized and archived histories,
to a shift towards ‘unwritten forms’ of television cultures, accessible through what remains ‘unarchived’ and subject to ‘incidental encounter’, the paper
will look into broadcast architecture as a ‘signifier of absence’(Buchli, 1999) that unveils contradictions and discontinuities in Romanian television history.
The paper focuses on the construction of the Television Centre in Bucharest and its architect Tiberiu Ricci’s ambivalent relations with power. Drawing upon
the architectural plans of the Television Centre, interviews with TV employees and written documents from the Securitate Archives in Bucharest, the paper
will point out to the complex, at times contradictory and disruptive narratives behind the construction of the RomanianTelevision Centre. Bringing together
a material culture approach, Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Attfield’s design theory, the paper dives into the‘unvoiced’or‘silenced’uses, users and mean‑
ings (Miller, 1998), which have been inscribed within the materiality of the Television Centre’s form, function and language, and which challenge Romanian
television's confinement within the East-versus-West discourse. References: Attfield, J. (2000) Wild Things. The Material Culture of Everyday Life, Oxford:
Berg Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Buchli, V. (1999) An Archaeology of Socialism, Oxford: Berg
de Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, California: University of California Press Foucault, M. (1969) Archaeology of Knowledge, New York:
Pantheon Books Hodder I. (eds. 1987), The Archaeology of Contextual Meanings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Miller, D. (eds. 1998), Material
Cultures. Why Some Things Matter, London: University College London Press
PP 303
Television as a Practice of Cultural Memory: A European Comparative Approach to Studying Audio-Visual Representations of the Past
B. Hagedoorn
1
1
University of Groningen, Media Studies and Journalism, Groningen, Netherlands
Television is a significant mediator of past and historical events in modern media systems. In this paper, I present results frommy dissertation Doing History,
Creating Memory: Representing the Past in Documentary and Archive-Based Television Programmes within a Multi-Platform Landscape (defended in Janu‑
ary 2016), in which I have studied practices of representing the past on Dutch television as a multi-platform phenomenon. Dynamic screen practices such as
broadcasting, cross-media platforms, digital thematic channels and online television archives provide access to a wide range of audio-visual materials. By
exploring how television's convergence with newmedia technologies has affected its role as a mediator of the past, this study reflects on how contemporary
representations of history contribute to the construction of cultural memory. Specifically, the poetics of doing history in archive-based and documentary
programming are analysed from 2000 onwards, when television professionals in the Netherlands seized the opportunity to experiment with storytelling
practices made possible by the increased digitisation of archival collections and the presence of online and digital platforms. This study is founded on
a textual analysis of audio-visual cases to reveal processes of meaning making, and a production studies approach to gain insight into creators' strategies
of broadcasting and multi-platform storytelling in relation to historical events. In this context, theoretical work from the areas of cultural studies, memory
studies, narratology, media theory and (television) historiography has also been collected and critically interpreted, to address history and memory as
processes of discursive struggle. Such an approach reveals distinct textual, cultural-historical and institutional aims, strategies and conventions for doing
history on television, bringing power relations to the surface. In this paper, I will pay specific attention to the case of the long-running Dutch archive-based
history programme Andere Tijden [Different Times, VPRO/NPS/NTR, 2000-present), in which the re-use of archival footage in relation to topical events, as
well as a cross-media approach, play a prominent role in the audio-visual representation of events from the past by television programme makers. This
study demonstrates, first, how the selection and circulation of historical narratives and audio-visual archive materials in new contexts of television works in
relation to processes of mediation, hybridity and curation, and second, how such practices help to search, preserve and perform individual and collective cul‑
tural memories.Televised histories connect viewers/users with the past and provide necessary contextual frameworks through cross-media and transmedia
storytelling, demonstrating the continuing importance of stories and memories produced through televisual practices – challenging accepted versions
of history. Furthermore, this paper presents suggestions for follow-up research, based on a recent pilot study. In this follow-up study, I situate my interest
in audio-visual representations of the past in a wider European and comparative context, to interrogate how past and historical events are represented
through audio-visual materials in different political, economic, cultural and ideological national contexts in Europe. To do so, I have developed a compar‑
ative research model to study specific cases of audio-visual representations of the past in different countries in Europe, organized around a set of common
questions, themes, and methodological reflections.
Television Studies
(TVS01–TVS06)