On the occasion of the Conglomerate.TV Block 4 Release we have invited local collectives Paper Tiger TV, and Deep Dish TV to share their collaborative work appropriating television forms for experimentation and join in a discussion around artist run television and the television network model.

Founded in 2016 by Sol Calero, Ethan Hayes-Chute, Derek Howard, Christopher Kline, and Dafna Maimon, CONGLOMERATE explores the potential of utilizing the organizational structure and output format of “television” while building a collectivity-focused network. While the overall project is conceived of as a Gesamtkunstwerk, each video segment ties into and utilizes a different artistic practice or gesture. At times these segments form an entire TV show or video work, while at others they appear as a structural element facilitating a greater whole, without hierarchical division. Through the multiple ways the different elements and modes of collaboration are woven together, the Blocks form a kind of network of voices, perspectives, relations, skills, and collective affective labor. The varying degrees of involvement of CONGLOMERATE’s makers and contributors create platforms within platforms, or artworks within artworks, where one artist’s practice can be featured within another’s. This flexibility and continuous shifting of vision and responsibility from maker to maker offers a new potential model for the sustainable and independent realization of larger art projects.

Block Four features guest contributions from Aurora Sander, Josep Maynou, Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor, Kev Bewersdorf, Eli Cortiñas, and Pascual Sisto, as well as new episodes and works by CONGLOMERATE’s core team of Derek Howard, Sol Calero, Dafna Maimon, Christopher Kline and Ethan Hayes-Chute.

Derek Howard is a director and cinematographer who earned a BFA from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His collaborations have led to screenings at the Venice Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Sundance Film Festival, HotDocs, Festival International du Court Métrage à Clermont-Ferrand, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (Montreal), Festival des Films du Monde (Montreal), and many others. Upon moving to Berlin, Germany, he became the assistant director to noted documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky, (“Vivan Las Antipodas,” opening night film Venice Film Festival 2011), “Varicella (IDFA 2015)” as well as his most recent project “Aquarela” (currently in post-production).

Derek has participated in the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam’s Summer School, IDFAcademy, Reykjavik International Film Festival’s Trans Atlantic Talent Lab, and the Berlinale Talents program. He co-shot Chelsea McMullan’s musical documentary “My Prairie Home,” which screened in competition at Sundance 2014, as well as her more recent feature “Michael Shannon Michael Shannon John.” Most recently Derek shot Brett Story’s Sundance supported doc feature “The Hottest August.” He is also a member of Conglomerate TV, a Berlin based collaborative Gesamtkunstwerk presented in the form of a television network. Derek lives and works in New York City.

Since 1986, Deep Dish TV has worked to build and maintain a statewide and national network of people and grassroots organizations committed to using television and the internet as outlets to address issues and perspectives inadequately represented by corporate media. We consciously serve communities whose images and interests are marginalized or misrepresented in the media. We encourage the awareness and use of public access TV, the internet, and alternative media for local organizing. We promote collaborations among artists, video makers and activists. Our mission is to produce and distribute video and other media to strengthen and increase the visibility of movements for social and economic justice.

Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) is an open, non-profit, volunteer video collective. Through the production and distribution of our public access series, media literacy/video production workshops, community screenings and grassroots advocacy PTTV works to challenge and expose the corporate control of mainstream media. PTTV believes that increasing public awareness of the negative influence of mass media and involving people in the process of making media is mandatory for our long-term goal of information equity.