It all started in 2000 with the idea to take a small Hi8 video camera along to the "Thursday demonstrations" against the "black-and-blue" government in order to be equipped to document possible assaults. As the years went by, a consistent and programmatic editorial coverage was developed. In 2001, the foundation of the performing art group United Aliens ? where the video group's name derives from - gave rise to important conceptual considerations which laid the foundation of the continuing work. Soon after, UATV did not only document all United Aliens art performances ? various events, initiatives and projects, ignored by the minuscule Austrian media landscape, seemed to be worth documenting. Current developments, non profit events and demonstrations are also among the main themes that UATV is dedicated to, as well as long lasting projects it partly accompanied for years. The main focus is on such issues as surveillance, privacy, migration and racism.
United Aliens TV does not aim at educational purposes or at becoming the exclusive media outlet of a certain social class or community of interests. UATV's ambition is to inform and to offer an additional, enhanced facet off the mainstream.
Since UATV was founded, the media landscape in Austria has changed considerably. Private TV channels have emerged, and several mostly profit-oriented websites are now presenting video reports. Nevertheless, we still see a high demand to continue our work due to the persistant lack of media diversity that still exists despite the boom of video journalism that can be observed. In doing so, networking and exchange of ideas with the few other alternative video producers with similar approaches are very important for UATV.
United Aliens TV is completely self-financed by a tiny production team, which implies advantages and disadvantages: While UATV does not own an explaination to anyone and does not follow anybody's orders, larger projects cannot be realised and jumps out of the Vienna basin, where UATV is domiciled at the moment, are rather limited.
At this point, we would like to express our gratitude to the web development team Art Mob from Graz, which hosted our first web portal for no charge and invested work, know-how and server capacities in UATV. Their support boosted our ambition to continue and present our work and to go beyond ourselves in terms of quantitative output: We are presenting at least one video per month, for years now.
At least that's the lie we use to draw off the attention from our plans to take over the world...
