|who shot JR?|
'Dallas' made its Romanian TV debut in the early 1980s (a few years after it first appeared in the U.S.) and ran for a couple of years before Ceaușescu, tightening his grip on the country, reduced television to
two hours a day – one hour of news (mainly about him) and one hour of poetry and music (all about him). The way some Romanian remember it, the last episode of 'Dallas' to air was 'Who Shot J.R?'. They didn’t find
out who did it until they could pick up that part of the series on Bulgarian television a few years later.
~ Roger Thurow, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Imagined as a music video, where the capitalist and communist scenario overlap, Who Shot JR? plays on confusing similarities and on historical irony. The only character shown maintains the confusion - Is it the narrative's objective singer? Is it JR? Is it Ceaușescu? In the power exchange choreography, the missing 3D characters are distinguished through the gestures used and through their clothing. The televised script can't skip the shooting scene. But who shot whom in the end?
Displayed @
► Media Art Festival Arad - Vth edition - De Rerum Natura, Arad Natural Science Museum; Arad,
2018