On Television, Beckett

The exhibition On Television, Beckett is a project by artist Gerard Byrne and curator and Beckett expert Judith Wilkinson. It presents for the first time all seven groundbreaking teleplays that Samuel Beckett produced for Süddeutscher Rundfunk (SDR, now SWR) in Stuttgart between 1966 and 1985: He Joe (1966), Geistertrio (1977), … nur noch Gewölk … (1977), Quadrat I (1981), Quadrat II (1981), Nacht und Träume (1982), and Was Wo (1985). It also shows Beckett’s television version of his play, Not I, produced for the BBC and broadcast by SDR on November 1, 1977, together with Geistertrio and … nur noch Gewölk … under the title “Schatten.”

The exhibition serves as testament not only to Samuel Beckett’s outstanding artistic practice, but also marks a moment of experimental openness, risk-taking, and pioneering work on the part of German television broadcasters. What did Beckett see in the still young medium of television as an alternative to theater, cinema, and radio? The exhibition examines this question from today’s perspective, a time when the meaning and function of television has changed radically in the face of the internet, social media, and streaming services. As television’s ubiquitous dominant cultural position is increasingly eroded, the latent promise of the televisual medium that so intrigued Beckett may once again be visible. The exhibition’s display borrows, among other things, from one of the historical television recording sets in Stuttgart. In addition to the eight teleplays, which are shown as video projections in four cinema/theater like spaces, the exhibition includes numerous largely unpublished documents related to Beckett’s time spent in Stuttgart and his work at SDR. The presentation of these documents in the form of an essayistic frieze reflects the exhibition’s curatorial-artistic perspective on Beckett. Through the prism of the archive, Beckett is recognized as a visionary of the medium and a hands-on practitioner who directly engaged with the technical and creative process of making television. A selection of films and videos from the 1960s to the present day by Beckett and other artists expands the contextualization of the teleplays.

Beckett, the SDR and Stuttgart
In the late 1950s, Samuel Beckett (b. 1906, Dublin; d. 1989, Paris) began experimenting with the medium of radio, writing radio plays for the BBC, RTF and Süddeutscher Rundfunk in Stuttgart. In 1965 Beckett was introduced to Reinhart Müller-Freienfels, SDR’s Artistic Director, and head of the station’s Television Drama Department, by art historian Werner Spies. When Beckett met Müller-Freienfels he had just launched a new SDR series entitled Der Autor als Regisseur (The Author as Director). The works that Beckett would go on to write and direct for SDR from 1966 to 1985 would be amongst the most ambitious and uncompromising pieces of television ever made. Among those who recognized the artistic relevance of Beckett’s television plays early on was the Canadian artist Stan Douglas, who curated the exhibition Samuel Beckett: Teleplays 1987–1988 for the Vancouver Art Gallery back in 1988. French philosopher Gilles Deleuze devoted his essay The Exhausted (original: L’Épuisé) to them in 1992.

Curated by
Gerard Byrne, Judith Wilkinson

Funded by
Kulturamt der Stadt Stuttgart
Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst des Landes Baden-Württemberg
Zeitgeist Irland 24
Baden-Württemberg Stiftung 
ProLab