UHF42

UHF42
organized by Mike Crane

2014.5.29 - 6.27
Wattan TV (팔레스타인 라말라)

Basma Alsharif, Home Movies Gaza, 2013 (video still)

UHF42 is a month-long screening series broadcast through the live frequency of Wattan, an independent television station based in Ramallah, Palestine. The program showcases 20 recent works by local and international artists, with a single screening taking place each weekday on local television and streaming online after the station’s regularly scheduled news program. The screenings feature a brief introduction by one of the station’s daily news anchors. Wattan has been raided twice and had their frequency shutdown five times, by both Palestinian and Israeli authorities, since it was first established through the telecommunications agreement of the Oslo 2 Accords in 1996. The station continues to provide daily coverage of education, politics, culture, and sports, despite undergoing a destructive raid in February 2012.

UHF42 employs Palestine’s first independent television frequency as an exhibition platform, presenting a collection of moving-image works that resonate through their use of televisual modes of production that range from documentation of political events, interviews, and geographic settings, to fictional depictions of historical figures and athletic exercises. These works have been selected based on recommendations by local artists who are familiar with the channel, as well as artists from other regions who have explored the conventions of TV broadcasting abroad. As such, the program draws upon the geopolitical and cultural significance of the television medium, and, by extension, Wattan’s unique regional position as a broadcasting agency operating under precarious circumstance.