TV Trampoline

TV TRAMPOLINE (2021–2024)

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Curated by Andjeas Ejiksson and Maria Lind

 

“TV Trampoline” dove into children’s television of the period 1965–1985, engaging artists and writers to make works and interpretations inspired by television series such as "Gena the Crocodile," "Sesame Street," "Little Sandman," and "Professor Balthazar."

 

In the prime of the Swedish social welfare state, the so-called record years, children, their living conditions and rights, had indeed been prioritised, including through access to a wide range of qualitative children’s programs on first one and then two public television channels. From the late 1960s onwards, new subjects, formats and forms of address were introduced.

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During this period, at least in Sweden, children’s television became a veritable melting pot of partly contradictory cultural and political references, merging the two sides of the Iron Curtain and, not least, the Non-Aligned and neutral nations. In this way, television constitutes a collective childhood memory for people who grew up in different parts of the world, even where there were and still are political barriers that made such exchanges difficult. This was also a period when television broadcasts went from being mainly national projects to cross-border transmissions that challenged the formula “viewers = citizens.”

 

Until the late 1980s, television in Sweden was broadcast solely as a public service, aiming simultaneously to entertain, socialize, and educate. The approach of Swedish television was to regard children as competent viewers who should not be prevented from learning about life and the realities of the world, although some filtering was deemed necessary. Fairy tales and fiction, birth and death, friendship and conflicts, war and hardship; all had a place in the programming, in which the voice of the children themselves played a certain role. However, the programs were not always seen as unproblematic, whether due to their occasional promotion of Western historiography or on account of left-leaning messaging.

 

We sought out productions from a range of political and cultural contexts that seemed to have had a significant impact both in Sweden and elsewhere, and the interpretations touched on topics such as how children’s television links to issues of memory, citizenship, education, and political movements.

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The different manifestation of the exhibition, resembles episodes in a TV series where characters and contexts are recognizable, while the plot develops and changes. The first episode of "TV Trampoline" opened at Fabrika in Moscow in December 2021. During the spring and summer of 2022, a second part was presented at Kalmar konstmuseum and during the autumn and winter a third episode was exhibited at Bildmuseet in Umeå. A fourth part was published as an issue of the magazine Ord & Bild in May 2022. The fifth part opened at Norrtälje konsthall in June 2023 and the sixth part was presented at KiN – Konstmuseet i Norr, in Kiruna.

 

Participating artists and writers: Ida Börjel, Lo Hillarp, Petra Bauer, Andjeas Ejiksson, Annika Eriksson, Jennifer Hayashida, Salad Hilowle, Balsam Karam, Behzad Khosravi Noori, Runo Lagomarsino, Katarina Pirak Sikku, Olivia Plender.