neil
curtis on "25 - Das Magazin" and "Am Schauplatz"
april 2003
| it might sound odd to see neil curtis
appear on a TV documentry about people running a TV station in a skyscraper city in the
south of vienna, but when taking a closer look, it actually does make sense in some
ways... |
it was in 1997 when a few people from the wohnpark alterlaa - a skyscraper city
in the south of vienna - decided to start their own TV broadcast station, one of them was
neil curtis. being a huge admirer of architecture and especially skyscrapers, it was no
doubt that curtis fits to this place and the place fits to him. "I do most of my work
from here, paint, compose or just be creative. and my everyday sunset on my balcony is
another benefits of this place" he says about this place. the WPTV station is just
one of the unique advantages of living in a dense area: a supermarket mall, school, two
huge parks and swimming pools on the roof are also part of the complex. "the basic
idea was to give the people here a possibility to make their own tv program" says
heinz sack, the founder of the project. curtis quickly realized the potential of the
project and started to invent programs for the station. one of them is "nighTV"
da daily night program that could be described as some kind of digital exhibition place,
because it shows 200 photos of a certain topic. it is no surprise that many of curtis'
projects like "tribal tribute", "sofa session" or "XPS" have
also been aired on "nighTV".
and it's also no surprise that the ORF - austrias main tv
station - wanted to take a closer look at the tv project, and therefore accidentially
bumped into neil curtis as well. "at that time I was doing some research if it would
be cool to show doormats on my nighTV, and so I went around taking photographs of the many
many doormats in the house. they are often the only thing that represents the people when
you look around, but they don't really care much about their doormats", says neil
curtis. and to his surprise they ORF team followed him through the process of creating the
nighTV. what a pitty neil curtis later scrapped the idea... ;-) the program was aired in
april 2003 and was part of the program "25 - Das Magazin" (youth program format)
and "Am Schauplatz" (documentry format).
digital video scans © ORF
