Revisiting Britain’s late-night weirdness at Various/Artists on the Lower East Side

Top photos and article by Daniel Efram 

After the evening news and before the test pattern lulled you to sleep, British TV once presented a strange and exciting in-between world — a late-night laboratory of eccentrics, artists, and unclassifiable oddballs. 

Through Nov. 9, multimedia gallery Various/Artists on Essex Street is resurrecting that era with "After The Watershed: Late-Night TV From Britain," a nostalgic installation in collaboration with the Colloquium for Unpopular Culture.

In England, the term "After The Watershed" refers to a time of day wherein broadcast limitations were less controlled and programming was less bound to rules and regulations. Experimental wonk and oddities were programmed alongside delicious dives into oddball characters with unique passions. Broadly, there are some similarities to US public access TV of the 1980s in that you never knew what you might get and might never see it again. 

"I learned loads from watching movies, documentaries, current affairs ... oddballs, eccentrics, rogues, dipthomaniacs on TV," describes S.S. Sandhu of the Colloquium for Unpopular Culture. "And I was watching it alongside millions of other people that wherever we were living we had exposure to music, to clothes, to noise, to fashion, to international politics, to serious ideas ... it is remarkable how [much of this insight] was available on late night TV. I wanted to honor that." 

For this exhibit, Various/Artists Co-Directors Scott Kiernan and Garrett Linn transformed their Lower East Side space into a period-piece living room, where visitors can sink into a second-hand sofa and watch fuzzy CRT screens play archival reels of British television at its most gloriously weird — no pause, no rewind, just the flicker and hum of another time. (Below left: SS Sandhu and Garret Linn.)

"The setting is really important ... There's a noise of the street, of real life going on…" Sandhu says. "In a modest way, this is reflected in this precise setting. 

"This was TV at the time; it certainly was not high definition. It wasn't superior technologically; it would be fuzz, static, and interference." 

Upon the first visit to the show, a reel on repeat in the back room included a visit with a toy train conductor whose spot-on set recalled a long-lost train line and a visit with Scottish poet, songwriter and humorist Ivor Cutler, who infamously appeared in the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour Film and in numerous BBC sessions and John Peel collaborations. 

There are four upcoming talks at the gallery, including deeper dives into the premise...

• Oct. 14 — 7:30 p.m.: Bad Meaning Good: Britain Does Subcultures 

Five extra films (on Brit Jazz, metal machine music, The Fall, Atomage fetish scene, and much more) followed by a discussion between writer, filmmaker, musician Dan Fox, and co-curator Sukhdev Sandhu.

• Oct. 21 — 7:30 p.m.: The Very Material of Television 

A screening presentation on the pioneering work of David Hall. "Hovering somewhere on the McLuhan-Monty Python-Mr Rogers continuum, Hall's work explored the television as a physical object, a piece of furniture, a dream machine." Presented by writer, professor and programmer Leo Goldsmith.

• Oct. 30 — 7 p.m.: "We Dissent" (1960) 

First screening in 65 years of Kenneth Tynan's 90-minute TV program about American writers, artists and thinkers who saw themselves as refuseniks from what America was — or was becoming. Introduced by radio producer and Theory of Everything podcast presenter Benjamen Walker

• Nov. 7 - 7 p.m.: Season Finale Deep cuts of televisual arcana with show co-curators Matthew Harle and Colm McAuliffe of The Colloquium for Unpopular Culture 

During the gallery's regular open hours, Thursday through Sunday from 3-8 p.m., guests can experience the exhibit by watching on the couch — perhaps with biscuits — and enjoy the latest programming, which changes each week. 

Various/Artists is at 19 Essex St. between Hester and Canal.