15:1
Single channel digital video, 24 mins 38 secs, 2001.

'15:1' is a reconstruction of a television quiz show, without the set, contestants, compere, lighting design or questions. Filmed in the same London TV studio, as the original programme, the soundtrack is constructed from the recordings made in the space alongside the images. The televisual structure, which created the illusion of a continuous narrative here becomes a framing device for the incidental.

"Categorically different from the kind of video art that either shoots already occurring events, or stages original content, Deignan’s work is a type of pseudo-mimesis that critiques—perhaps only implicitly—other art that seems to collude with the aesthetic values already established for TV. In this sense it is parasitic, which is characteristic of neo-conceptual work. (The first time round conceptual artists mainly used photography to critique established genres of photography; it seems obvious that of urgent interest now would be television.) Deignan’s choice of subject matter (“One Hundred Percent” and “15:1” are quiz shows) suggests the lowest of lowbrow culture, but at the same time you have the sneaking suspicion that it is not merely the ideology of anaesthetics that motivates her. On the contrary, such specificity suggests that her subjects are embedded in her own history and experience. Perhaps it is the guilty pleasure associated with watching daytime television, or the direct identification viewers have with quiz show contestants (“I can answer that!”). "

from the essay 'This Space is Unstable' by Alison Green, 2002.

© Michelle Deignan 2001