American Apocalypse

Goodbye Tape from gregor rozanski on Vimeo.

This video is an attempt to reconstruct (reimagine) the mysterious Ted Turner’s “end of the world tape”.
In 1980, after Turner created CNN, he said ‘We won’t be signing off until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event… we’ll play “Nearer, My God, to Thee” before we sign off.’ Another version of this quote is ‘We gonna go on air June 1, and we gonna stay on until the end of the world. When that time comes, we’ll cover it, play “Nearer, My God, to Thee”, and sign off.’
Ten years later, according to some reports, Turner used CNN production facilities to create what he called his “end-of-the-world” video, consisting of a recording of “Nearer, My God” over footage of a waving American flag. Turner is said to have ordered the tape locked away until it was determined that the world was about to end.
This kind of message—as an essence of american traditional and conservative values—could be presented to people around the world in the last moments of their life.
The video has hi-definition quality, because any future apocalypse will be watched on HD TVs.

P.S. “Nearer, My God, to Thee” is most famous as the alleged last song the band on RMS Titanic played before the ship sank. The same piece was sung by the doomed crew and passengers of the SS Valencia as it sank off the Canadian coast in 1906, and this event may be the source of the Titanic legend.

Gregor Rozanski (b. 1988 in Wroclaw, Poland) is an artist based in Berlin and Warsaw. He uses wide range of media: various conceptual practices, ephemeral projects, video, internet, found objects, sculpture, installations and drawings. His work has been shown at solo and group exhibitions in Germany, Poland, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Mexico and other countries. More info: http://gregorrozanski.com