Program This episode of "New Television" features Lynn Hershman's "Desire, Inc."
Lynn Hershman's "Desire, Inc." documents a media experiment. Hershman created several advertisements featuring a bleached-blonde model, which played with media and cultural fantasies of women. The advertisements gave a number for viewers to call, and Hershman interviewed some of the respondents. This story comes out slowly through narration by Hershman, the advertisements themselves, the diverse responses of viewers, and interviews with the model, Marion Grabansky. Hershman describes the advertisements as "electronic boomerangs" intended to solicit reactions. Most of the four respondents comment on the context the advertisements were viewed in, some with anger over the broadcast of an advertisement, which they perceive as reinforcing misogynist stereotypes, during an episode of "Cagney and Lacey" that dealt with rape. Hershman describes the project as "participatory television," or television that the viewer can talk back to. At many points in the work, she suggests a relationship between the importance of reproductive technologies in women's lives and the reproducing technologies of the media.
Series The New Television Workshop originated at WGBH, a public broadcasting station in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1974 to support the creation and development of experimental video art. This experimental programming included dance, drama, music, performance and visual arts on video and film. As early as 1968, WGBH was committed to the development of video art through residency programs, with artists such as Nam June Paik, and the "Rockefeller Artists-in-Television" project. Many of these early works (pre-1974) were broadcast both locally and nationally.
As an umbrella for arts related programming, the Workshop included "Artist's Showcase, " "Frames of Reference, " "Dance for Camera, " "Poetry Breaks," and "New Television," as well as acquired arts programming. Individual works were created for "Visions," a series produced by WNET (New York), and "Alive From Off Center," a series produced by KTCA (St. Paul - Minneapolis). The Contemporary Art Television (CAT) Fund was co-founded by the Workshop and Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in the 1980's, to commission works by video artists. In 1993 the Workshop ceased production at WGBH.
