Curated by collettivo Orfeo TV
Dedicated to Giancarlo “Ambrogio” Vitali
It was June 21, 2002, when Orfeo TV began broadcasting in Bologna: the first street television station, or “Telestreet.” Conceived as a Situationist provocation and a way to defend freedom of information against Berlusconi’s television monopoly, Orfeo TV was a micro-broadcaster that transmitted over the airwaves within a 150-metre radius of the streets of Orfeo and Rialto. Its signal was broadcast without authorization from a TV transmitter located in a “shadow zone”—a frequency unavailable to licensed broadcasters.
Two years before the birth of social media—web platforms that generate value by outsourcing content production to users—Orfeo TV aimed to create a different kind of value. Video production and broadcasting equipment was inexpensive, not only to make it easier for people to create content, but above all so citizens could practise the kind of “citizen journalism” that, it was hoped, would bring greater democracy to the information sphere. Street television was a space for experimenting with creativity, freedom of expression, and new formats and languages. The editorial team was open to participation and organized non-hierarchically: anyone could propose and produce their own content, provided they upheld three principles: anti-racism, anti-fascism, and anti-sexism. And everyone knew they could count on one another’s support.
Orfeo TV also helped forge intergenerational connections between the “kids” of Radio Alice in 1977 and university students active in Bologna. Such encounters are rare—and when they do happen, the result can be a television station broadcasting digitally produced content over analogue frequencies and sharing it via web streaming (before YouTube!).
Finally, this experience gave rise to networks of techno-political relationships that shaped the early 2000s and continued in the years that followed. The integrated model of neighbourhood micro-television and web streaming quickly spread across Italy, eventually encompassing as many as 200 stations. From social centres to Scout groups, audiovisual professionals, parishes, and small municipalities, the Telestreet network shared productions, organized events such as Eterea, and coordinated citizens’ efforts to take ownership of a media system that, in Italy, had never been regulated in accordance with the law.
