Untitled (The Remake), 2007, Single-channel video installation, HD Cam and archival footage transferred on Blurry, 16:9, color, stereo sound. Duration 14 min.
Untitled (The Remake) combines archival footage from the years of the 1967-1973 military dictatorship in Greece which depicts official festivities and parades staged by the Colonels (replete with the ‘obligatory’ nationalistic visual rhetoric harking back to Greece’s glorious past), with Tsivopoulos’ own video footage; the latter constitutes the core of the film. For this work, the artist re-constructed a television studio of the late 1960s, complete with all the original technical equipment that was used during this period; it was during this time that National Greek Television and Radio were also established. In the film, actors are cast in the role of two newscasters – one male, one female, dressed in the fashion of the day – and a cameraman, whom we can see preparing for the daily bulletin. In the background, television monitors show footage of Apollo’s 13 moon landing in 1969, international news footage of the day, and original black-and-white footage depicting the real newscasters from that time preparing for the broadcast that Tsivopoulos has painstakingly re- constructed.
Untitled (The Remake), is the first part of the Trilogy The Real The Story The Storyteller, in which Tsivopoulos focuses on the meaning of image production and its contribution on the manufacturing of history. In these works Tsivopoulos “questions the document as an objective trace left by events, as material evidence, or as the certification of reality. In this sense, he brings into question the authenticity of the document, and thus also its authoritativeness in providing evidence for the construction of history.”