Reality TV Inside the Museum

[dotinthesky]

Phil Collins' Turner Prize installation: the return of the real / gercegin geri donusu 2005

A "production company and research office investigating issues associated with recent media phenomena" has been set up at the Tate Britain, dedicated to people who feel their lives have been ruined by chat shows or reality TV. A website linked with this office (see photo above), Shady Lane Productions, offers ways in which you can contact the office and let them know if you were ever a participant in such a show and how negatively they affected you. And, I presume, your message gets sent to the office, at the exhibition, and you engage in dialogue with these office workers (poor arts students?) while visitors to the museum observe it all through the glass window. Maybe there's more involved (interviews, filming, etc)?

I doubt any Big Brother contestants will be contacting Shady Lane Productions, mainly because they are not the kind of people who read anything beyond Heat magazine or know what's going on in the world. Thinking back over the years, I remember participating in one reality TV show for BBC 2, called Diners. The show involved various C-list celebrities, as well as Joe Public, chatting over a meal at a fancy Eastend restaurant. My ex-housemate S., who works in television, at the time, was in need of people to sit in the restaurant where the series took place, as a sort of background fodder. Since me and a friend had nothing better to do (plus it was all expenses paid) we agreed to participate. A band called Rock Bitch, as well as one of the members of Spandau Ballet, were the guests in the show we were filmed. The food & wine was great, we laughed a lot (mostly at the other people there and the situation), and I never saw the finished product.

Have you ever been on reality TV or a chat show?

Comments

[redcountess]

No, but I was once a soundbyte on the late evening news on a Melbourne TV station - the first time Bon Jovi toured Melbourne in '87, people queued overnight to buy tickets (I turned up at dawn) and they were asking people why they liked the band, filming girls creaming their knickers, etc. but I just said cool as a cucumber "I like them for the music, mainly" - my 15 seconds of fame :-)

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Do you have that performance on tape?

[redcountess]

Unfortunately not. I used to, but it got lost over the years.