Return of the Real

This multi-channel video installation investigates the promises and betrayals of reality television from the point of view of former participants. Produced in Istanbul in the summer of 2005 and originally shown as part of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial, the project was structured as a forum for people who had never before met, but had in common their previous participation in reality TV and its profound affect on their lives. Reunited for a press conference in The Marmara, the city’s most iconic hotel, they were offered a chance to address national television, detailing and outlining the specific disappointments of their experiences, which were then broadcast on the evening news. For the second part of the project, Collins employed the former director of a Turkish makeover show to interview participants for a set of hour-long interviews which scrutinize both the subject and interviewer, and are by turns moving and hilarious testaments to our need to confess and to the complicated web of desires which surround our relationship with the medium. The exhibition at the Nederlands Fotomuseum incorporates a photographic installation comprising an official group portrait and a series of individual portraits produced by a local glamour studio.