The political satire group, maschek., come home for a night of puppetry and dubbed television clips in tow. Guerrilla media—or whatever name one gives it—doesn’t get much better than this. Who can refuse clips of politicians “talking” crap about their colleagues or their sex lives?

Get rid of your remote control, even if it’s just for one night. The US may have the Colbert Report and the Daily Show, but on this continent it’s all about maschek.

“Nobody is going to look into that box anyway”, said Austrian federal chancellor Julius Raab, when television was presented to him in 1956. Being sceptical about the future of TV as a mass media, he assured continuous political influence on radio for his conservative ‘People’s Party’ and left television to the Social democrats.

When Wolfgang Schuessel became federal chancellor in 2000, he could finally reverse his fellow party member Raab’s false estimation. However, in the archives of the first 45 years of Austrian television, the OeVP (Austrian People’s Party) still does not look very well. That is where “The Great Television Swindle” begins: Schuessel assigns media experts maschek to go through selected programmes from Austrian TV history and to brush up and correct everything that the OeVP is unhappy with. maschek gladly accepts the bid.

“The Great Television Swindle” is maschek’s new show (stage director: Ed. Hauswirth, Theater im Bahnhof, Graz), following the series “maschek.redet.drueber”, a monthly 90-minute show on the heights and lows of television. maschek call their main technique “caraoque”: by editing television samples they create new stories, muting the original character’s voices and doing live dubbing.

maschek was founded in 1998 by Peter Hoermanseder, Ulrich Salamun and Robert Stachel. They did a weekly radio show for two years, more than 150 live shows, some 20 hours of “TV caraoque” programmes and a number of short films and TV productions, participating in numerous festivals including “Transmediale”, “Cinematexas” and “Antimatter”.Find out more about maschek on their website: www.maschek.org

maschek’s “The Great Television Swindle”
January 11th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 21st, 22nd
Rabenhof Theater, Vienna 3, Rabengasse 3.
starting time: 20:00
tickets: 01/7128282 or www.rabenhof.at

the grey star 2 – the wehrmacht is a thoroughly underhanded piece of found footage. In contrast to what its title seems to promise – the original title could also be translated as The Cataract-, this clouding of the eye’s lens, found primarily in the elderly, distorts the visibly hidden continuities of the Austrian mentality until they become recognizable. This is done by means of an off-camera chorus of voices which – while reassuring one another of the obviousness of what is being shown – do nothing more than comment on what is already visible. But this happens in the context of a perceptual horizon which antedates the visual material by two decades and places it in a different location.As a result, this post-WWII amateur footage, with which memorable events (daily routine during military training and a vacation in southern lands) were recorded in all innocence, is transformed into a fictional record of everyday life in the German army and Argentinean exile. And why not? “Genuine” documents would also have reported on discipline, cleanliness, male bonding, comradeship, etc. “Caráoque” is the term maschek. apply to this process of analyzing the visible by means of tautologies. In this case, the voice of the narrator does not seize power over the images; it harmoniously interpolates itself into the spaces left open by the visual, allowing the question of the true meaning to be addressed. While this might vary somewhat from the original intention, it gets to the essence of the matter. And it is amusing. (Vrääth Ohner)