The Teleported Subject in Post-Socialist Romania. Rethinking the Possibility of Eastern European Subjects at the Intersection of (Global) Media and Regional History: The Example of Handmade Satellite Dishes

Abstract

Satellite television in Europe was a cultural phenomenon of the 1990s. It represented the start of private commercial television channels in western Europe. The technology became operational towards the end of the Cold War, and was aimed at the western public. However, due to its specificity, which is transmitting signal through space, covering a vast area on the earth’s surface (footprint), the eastern part of Europe could receive the satellite signal as well. In Romania, this was possible through the grassroots movement of building per handsatellite dishes and receivers. The media devices were handcrafted using inventive methods and materials, in the context of censorship, strict border controls, and economic shortages, prevalent in the last decade of the socialist regime. I analyze in the potential of the media device and its role in the transition from socialism to post-socialist in Romania. The satellite dish connected the people living in the post-socialist peripheric space, to the global infrastructure communication network, which was transposing the existing hegemonial power axis from the horizontal (the ground), into the vertical (outer-space). I refer to the concept of former Eastern Europe contextualized within the critique of modernity in decolonial theory and I expose the history of the socialist regime recalibrated through it. Technology, in the form of satellite dishes, is inserted into the linearity, acting as a remodeler of the understanding of the subject caught in the intertwining between telematic global space and post socialism.

Short biography

Alexandra Tatar is a visual artist and researcher living and working in Vienna since 2011. In her recent artistic practice, she takes the space called ‘Central and Eastern Europe’ as her artistic terrain and focuses on systems and interdependencies which have historically shaped these spaces. Her research on subjectivity and power axis builds on previous works, in which she dealt with visual culture’s influence on identity construction.