Piquetero TV in Argentina
by Sebastian Hacher
Mute has recently covered the appearance of street TV in Italy [unavailable, check out these instead]. Here, Sebastian Hacher reports on the emergence of a new form of self-instituted community media out of Argentina's piquetero movement
Like the advertising people we talked about, I'm concerned with
the precise manipulation of word and image to create an action,
not to go out and buy Coca-Cola, but to create an alteration in
the reader's consciousness – William Burroughs
'Mister, mister! What time will we be on TV?'
'Film his ribs, look at how skinny he is!'
The children come in from playing, covered head to bare feet in mud, dragging behind them the smallest child in a box on wheels. They get excited when the camera focuses on them in the middle of the preparations for the transmission. They probably aren't aware that the subject of their questions and pleas is not a normal television producer come to cover some crime, accident, or fire, but a piquetero. The man hanging off a post trying to mount an antenna is setting up the first ever live transmission by a mobile television channel in Florencio Valera's San Rudecindo neighbourhood.