With the U.S. election fast-approaching, we’re showing a series of films that contextualize our political moment.

Made at the height of the 1992 U.S. presidential election, Spin is a radical work of media criticism assembled from pirated satellite feeds that reveals how politics are packaged on TV. Directed by the artist Brian Springer, whose practice deals with media manipulation and appropriation, this film anticipates how TV-networks’ storied theatrics have heightened the general public’s distrust of politicians and journalists.

After realizing that you could intercept network satellite feeds, Springer decided to make a video-diary of the ‘92 electoral year. His combination of “scanning and chance” resulted in a series of outtakes that Americans were purposefully kept in the dark about: then-incumbent President George H. W. Bush vomiting and fainting during a banquet with the Japanese Prime Minister, talk-show host Larry King trying to get Bush to invest in a pharmaceutical business, and local news anchors expressing contempt about rioters in L.A. following the Rodney King Trial. The 600 hours of footage Springer gathered and compiled into his 57-minute exposé present the rampant chicanery underpinning the political establishment’s public persona.

“I am always interested in foibles and new technologies, the new windows that open as systems try to gather information and increasingly gain control. The process of getting information opens new windows, or identifies leaks in the system, kind of inherently.” BRIAN SPRINGER

 

He thought of the project as “one television viewer sharing information about how television is constructed with other television viewers.” As such, Spin works as a media literacy communiqué intended for citizens to become more aware of how the images, messages, and slogans peddled on live television were being carefully designed by political aides, spin-doctors, and campaign financiers. More recently, he’s spoken about the importance of citizens “being mobilized to use their iPhones as witnessing devices to document police brutality, and [how] the internet has become a distribution system for citizens’ media.” As in ‘92, Springer continues to stress the importance behind what is private information and what shouldn’t be, especially as citizens become more reliant on one another after endless lies and runarounds from authority figures.

The media artist Brian Springer has developed an artistic practice focused on expanding media literacy. Spin and its follow-up film, Feed (1992), both made use of raw satellite feeds to show how news channels and politicians mold the public perception of current events. His 2007 documentary, The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity, deals similarly with questions of belief and disbelief as it untangles the history of four lost treasures buried on a farm in Missouri. All of these documentaries have been widely praised for their insights about how Americans forgo certain truths and his works have been exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou, and the Hammer Museum, among other renowned institutions.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to series co-programmer Courtney Muller.