Van Gogh TV was a collective of hackers and artists who ran their own art television station at the German art exhibition documenta in 1992. „Piazza virtuale“ was on for 100 days and invited the audience to participate in its production. Inspired by the media theory of German writer Bertolt Brecht who wanted to turn the consumers into producers of media content, they devised a whole range of possibilities to make the audience part of the program. Shortly before the rise of the WorldWideWeb, they created a precursor to the internet of today.

German media critic Tilman Baumgärtel (Hochschule Mainz, Germany) conducted an extensive research project on Van Gogh TV (https://vangoghtv.hs-mainz.de/). He will introduce „Piazza Virtuale“ and show his documentary film on this ground-breaking television project.