WOBBY WORKOUT - MIKA SCHALKS

Wobby Workout is a work period at our studio in NS16, Tilburg. In this focused and individual setting, artists can explore and experiment with the Risograph printer, fostering the development of innovative ideas and working methods. In early 2023 we invited graphic designer and illustrator Mika Schalks (NL) to work at our studio.

During this residency, he continued his graduation work about the queerness of television. The channels he created for that work inspired him to dive deeper into the characters themselves, especially the lady in green.

In a risoprinted TV guide (read: comic) and a few short animation clips, he explores a fictional story of the lonely existence of the lady in green, leading perhaps the last television channel on earth. While stuck in her daily rhythm, running the TV studio all by herself, one day she gets a blue letter that reveals something she had forgotten over the years: someone was actually watching her on TV.

“Channel 0 once was an internationally acclaimed television channel, but because of a signal interference only a small year after the channel’s launch, all programs, commercials, sitcoms and newscasts - that were praised as the height of modern television-entertainment - had been reduced to a simple stream of what many would describe as a grey noise. Specialists call it worlds biggest signal interference ever and expect it can never be repaired.

This TV guide is a reproduction of the original first and only edition of the NO SIGNAL TV GUIDE, that was found in the abandoned NO SIGNAL television studio. It was never published or seen by anyone, until now. 

This guide reveals the story behind channel 0 and the production company “Normal Ordinary Signal” that had been rumoured to be out of business early after its launch. But according to one woman, the author of this guide, the channel always continued working and broadcasting.

Some say it is still broadcasting to this very day, if you stare at channel 0 only long enough.”

Mika about the project:

“Normal Ordinary Signal is supposed to be a vision from the television of a child's perspective. Exactly what I used to think about television as a child, this TV studio is run by one singular person. She just manages everything. She is the presenter of the show, but also the camera woman and director. The lady in green truly reflects how I felt working on this project, because like many artists, I am my own boss. I too have many titles within my own company, I too have to think about the audience of the work I create, while sometimes I just want to create without specific purpose. I too realised, like the lady in green, that my work is not all happening in my head, but people are actually watching. Although this project I could not have done alone, like my lady-in-green counterpart. The NO Signal TV guide is riso-printed at Wobby.club in Tilburg with the help of Bobbi Oskam and the whole project supervised by Marjolein Schalk.

Apart of working on the backstory of a character that I created, it was also very important for me to make sure the illustrations in this story would feel tangible. In my research about camp aesthetics in children television, for instance in Dutch children's shows from the 90’s, I learned that many shows felt like they were handmade. Sets and costumes would be extremely colourful, and recognisable as being what they were: TV sets and costumes, not real life. They embraced the charm of hand painted backgrounds and unscripted madness. Critics might say: well, anyone can make that! And they might be somewhat right. Having shows with no filter and a relatively low budget, made TV feel extremely accessible. This was the feeling I was trying to grasp while drawing this comic with my pencil and ruler in hand.

To further support the story and the materiality I created a stop-motion puppet of the lady in green and her surroundings to create the “lost archive” of channel 0. I built a small soundstage and the outside of the NO Signal studio with the help of stop-motion artists and Holy Motion Studio colleagues Anna Dekker & Danithia van Weenum.
I hope that small parts of the lost archive of NO Signal can be released soon, although the footage is heavily damaged and it may take years to fully recover all the unseen programs that were broadcasted by the lady in green. We can only hope to see more of NO Signal and its RGB colour scheme, when the grey transmission noise clears up.”

Mika’s publication ‘No Signal’, which he produced at the Wobby.club studio, was released in April 2023 during the Wobby Club Night at NS16, Tilburg.
Order “No Signal” by Mika Schalks here.

This project is funded by Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie.