BASEL.- Museum Tinguely presents the installation The Last Reality Show by Basel theatre director Boris Nikitin, a replica of the «house» featured in the first German series of the reality television show Big Brother in 2000. Measuring 10 by 10 metres, it was originally part of the set for his production Erste Staffel. 20 Jahre Grosser Bruder at Staatstheater Nürnberg. For the exhibition in Basel, Nikitin and his team have reworked the object, transforming it into an unusual installation that will be on show in Basel from 6 December 2023 until 21 January 2024. It offers a many-facetted reflection of developments in global society over the past 23 years and links them with the moment when ordinary people first volunteered to be observed round the clock for a TV show.
Big Brother was the first reality show to be aired simultaneously on television and on the internet, marking a paradigm shift and ushering in the age of digital visibility.
The fourth wall between private and public spheres was abolished, the word 'Fremdscham' (cringe factor) entered the German language, and everyday life became a matter of performance and and thus also a matter of politics.
The show’s secret star, from the outset, was the Big Brother house. It was a democratic utopia, dystopia and work of popular Conceptual Art rolled into one. In Nikitin’s 10 x 10-metre replica, the dimensions are slightly altered, one room is missing, and it is made not out of real metal but white-painted wood. It is an imitation of a building that was itself already a simulacrum. The 'house' is empty, its inhabitants having long since left.
The presentation is accompanied by the «Reality Machines 1-4» events series that deals in detail with the ways reality is portrayed and produced today.
Wednesday, 6 December 2023, 6:30 pm
Reality Machine 1: The Planetary Testbed: Big Data, AI, and the Future of Human Life
Talk with Orit Halpern (in English)
Wednesday, 20 Dezember 2023, 6:30 pm
Reality Machine 2: Imitations of Life
Boris Nikitin in conversation with the curator and writer Florian Malzacher on emancipatory forgeries, radical vulnerability, reality TV and their book Das Gegenteil der Dinge.
Wednesday, 10 January 2024, 6:30 pm
Reality Machine 3: Mindbombs
Talk with Sebastian Baden
In his talk on the history of “mindbombing”, Sebastian Baden presents aspects of a visual culture of political violence in the context of terrorist media events.
Wednesday, 17 January 2024, 6:30 pm
Reality Machine 4: Decade without borders
Journalist Jens Balzer in conversation with Boris Nikitin on the 1990s, reality TV and the performance revolution.
Museum Tinguely
The Last Reality Show: Boris Nikitin
December 6th, 2023 - January 21st, 2024
