Test Tube 45 years old

Produced by De Appel, Amsterdam, while General Idea was in residence there, Test Tube was conceived as a program for television. Presented under the brand "The Color Bar Lounge," a cocktail bar in the mythical 1984 Miss General Idea Pavilion, the program is a hybrid of popular television formats […] and infomercial. […] Advertisements for the bar are placed throughout the program; a loaded word choice, full of double-entendres and innuendo, betrays the influence of both Dadaism and consumerism. This collapse of popular and high culture is central to General Idea's agenda, as Felix Partz observes: "You know, the mass media are like a vast pharmaceutical complex developing new cultural elixirs of an unprecedented intoxication…but art remains a curious and elitist drink. Despite its unique flavor and heady cultural properties, it has never effectively been exploited."

Credits

Test Tube Cast

Name Character
Titus Muizelaar He was 29, now 75 years old
Marina Abramović She was 32, now 78 years old

Test Tube Crew

Name Department
Test Tube (45 years)

  • Release day: Monday, January 01, 1979
  • Runtime: 28 minutes