Paper Tiger Television: It’s 8:30. Do you know where your brains are?

It’s 8:30. Do you know where your brains are? is the first exhibition in the UK to present the work of Paper Tiger Television (PTTV), a US-based video production and distribution collective. Over four decades of critical and creative activity, they made nearly 400 programmes for the public access channels of cable television, presented hundreds of workshops and trained countless video-makers. Founded in 1981, a conjunction in which residual political energies and optimism from the 1960s combined with an enthusiasm for newly available video technologies, PTTV critiqued corporate control of the communications industry and provided a radical alternative to it. Due to franchise agreements made with local municipalities, which ensured that most cable systems in the United States had a few public access channels, PTTV enacted its ideological critique on television itself. The exhibition will feature around 40 programmes from across the decades of PTTV activity, many of which have rarely been seen since they were first broadcast, as well as visual and graphic items used in production, archival material and various publications. An extensive series of talks and events will also revisit important programmes, bringing out different aspects of PTTV’s work.