Video installation. 27' 14"

In its original conception, it consisted of a video installation where a television set placed on a piece of domestic furniture beside other objects (a lamp, books, etc.), broadcasts an endless succession of film and television credits creating a mosaic or collage of letters, graphics, tunes, music, professional ranks and corporate images.

In Credits, Muntadas' analysis of the media landscape extends to what he terms the "invisible" information behind mass media productions. By isolating the credits of several TV and film productions — The Lawrence Welk Show, ABC's Wide World of Sports, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, among others — from their original context, he demonstrates that the language, sound/music, visuals, graphics, typography, format and rhythm reflect how the producers and producing institutions choose to represent themselves. In a tape that he intends to have no beginning and no end, Muntadas deconstructs and rereads the credits until they become pure information.

Credits (1985) grabbed television (and audiovisual production in general) by the tail, for it consisted of a continuous succession of credits, both from television programmes and from the repertoire of films that fill up TV grids. Muntadas considers it to be a video without a beginning or end—dynamic wallpaper TV as conceived by Nam June Paik and other members of Fluxus—and has occasionally presented it in the form of an installation which in my opinion is more appropriate than a linear viewing. Again we are dealing with the invisible, as audiences usually ignore the often prolific display of generic credits, with the exception of professionals and film-lovers who scrupulously verify cinematic detail. Muntadas 'framed' them, however, because of their importance in product identity, design decisions, implicit professional hierarchies, musical accompaniment, etc.

Eugeni Bonet

Television, Front and Side Views(2008)