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"The TV gallery only exists in a series of TV transmissions, that means TV Gallery is more or less a mental institution, which comes only into real existence in the moment of transmission by TV."
-Gerry Schum in a letter to Gene Youngblood, 1969
Like many working in the arts during this period, Schum—a documentary filmmaker for West German broadcast television—saw the traditional hierarchies of painting and sculpture as outdated, and the institutions in which they circulated as an inaccessible system. Together with his wife Ursula Wevers, Schum sought ways to break "the eternal triangle of studio, gallery, collector," and employ network systems via conceptual means to achieve new forms of communication. In 1968 Gerry Schum initiated Fernsehgalerie (TV Gallery) Gerry Schum. Albeit brief, Schum’s project introduced a new framework for viewing earthworks, performance, and conceptual art in the context of everyday life, a practice carried on today.
Gerry Schum: TV Gallery at EAI, October 8, 6:30 pm
Gerry Schum, Land Art - Fernsehausstellung I, Fernsehgalerie Berlin, 1969 (32 min)
The first exhibition featured works by Richard Long, Barry Flanagan, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, Marinus Boezem, Jan Dibbets, and Walter de Maria. These seven artists utilized water and land as art medium. The camera functioned as witness to earth-driven art installations, capturing and dispersing artistic process outside the typical studio environment. Schum is now recognized as coining the term "Land Art" with this 1969 broadcast.
Gerry Schum, Identifications - Fernsehausstellung II, Fernsehgalerie Berlin, 1970 (36 min) Schum’s second broadcast
featured twenty artists from six countries, including Joseph Beuys, Klaus Rinke, Ulrich Rückriem, Daniel Buren, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, Stanley Brouwn, Ger van Elk, Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Mario Merz, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Franz Erhard Walther, and Lawrence Weiner. Their contributions, which ran from thirty-five seconds to five minutes, revealed an artistic concern with designed action, including physical interactions with the camera. This Fernsehgalerie production exhibited what Schum asserted as the new mode of art experience: "(...) We no longer experience the art object as a painting or sculpture with no contact to the artist. In the TV object the artist can reduce his object to the attitude, to the mere gesture, as a reference to his conception."
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Gerry Schum (b. Cologne 1938-1973) studied television and film production at the Deutsches Institut für Film und Fernsehen in Munich, and at Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie Berlin from 1961 to 1968. He began work as a cameraman and filmmaker for television broadcast stations in Berlin around 1966, completing a series of documentary collaborations for television broadcast: Schaustücke - Ereignisse (Showpieces - Events)(1967); Kunst-Biennale San Marino (1967); and Konsumkunst-Kunstkosum (Consumption-Art, Art-Consumption)(1968). With Ursula Wevers, he initiated Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum, 1968–1970 and Videogalerie Schum, 1971–1973. Over the course of five years, Schum worked as collaborator and cameraman to broadcast and distribute
artist films and videos by John Baldessari, Joseph Beuys, Jan Dibbets, Gilbert & George, Mario Merz, Bruce Nauman, Ulrich Rückriem, Richard Serra, Ger van Elk, and Lawrence Weiner, and others. In 1972 Schum was commissioned to present video art sections at Documenta 5 and the Venice Biennale. Before his death in 1973 Schum accepted the position of curator for the first video art studio at Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany.
Robyn Farrell is a writer and curator based in Chicago. Her academic interests include the intersection of contemporary art, technology, and time-based media, and early European video collectives circa 1970. She has participated in panels and conferences on this topic at the University of Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the College Art Association Annual Conference. Robyn has organized exhibitions and screenings throughout the Chicago area and has written for organizations including INTUIT: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, the DePaul Art Museum, Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center, ArtSlant Chicago, Jettison Quarterly, and Timeout Chicago. She is currently Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago.
On Tuesday, October 7, 6:30 pm, Deutsches Haus will screen rare documentary films produced by Schum, including Dies alles Herzchen wird einmal dir gehören (All This Darling Will Once Belong To You) (1967, 6:55 min) with a lecture by curator Robyn Farrell.
For more information please visit www.deutscheshaus.as.nyu.edu
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www.eai.org
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