The BCC Channel is an experimental online broadcast platform that reimagines how moving-image works are experienced in real time. Hosted by le149.net and produced and curated by TBCS in special collaboration with programmer Alexander Rohbs, it pairs live internet screenings with an integrated chat interface, transforming solitary viewing into a shared, discursive event.
Designed as both a media laboratory and a civic space, the BCC Channel supports works that reflect on, critique, and play with contemporary cultural, political, and artistic questions. At the same time, it examines the histories of the media we’ve inherited—using today’s tools to record, challenge, and reshape contemporary history as it unfolds.
Learn more and click on the individual episodes below to watch/read the replays (be patient with the long loading time). OR – find the videos created by TBCS for the broadcasts here, or just drift around this site and you are sure to run into them.
Episode 1: Love, Magic, and Misdirection
=> live broadcast on 5 November 2015
This episode explores the relationship between magicians and inventors from early cinema to today. Through video art, interviews, and role-playing games, we investigate illusion as both creative engine and social force—shaping collaboration, skepticism, humor, and the subtle art of bluffing. What does magic reveal about how we see, believe, and create together?
Episode 2: Secrets, Anonymity, and Transparency
=> live broadcast on 27 February 2016
What makes a secret necessary—or dangerous? In an era of mass surveillance, we examine privacy, transparency, and the politics of information, exploring how individuals and institutions distinguish between protection and exposure, whistleblowing and treason. From governments to museums to personal devices, we ask who gets to decide what stays hidden—and why.
Episode 3: Dreams, Fantasies, and Desires
=>live broadcast date: 13 July 2016
What is reality—and who gets to define it? We explore the space between perception and imagination, human desire and machine logic, alter egos and waking life. Moving through dream work, memory, and narrative, the episode considers how the stories we tell shape both personal ambition and collective truth.
Episode 4: Power, Fear, and Information
=> live broadcast date: 13 January 2017
Amid political uncertainty and hyper-mediated public life, we take a closer look at power, fear, and information—three forces shaping how majorities form and act. We explore how institutions and media platforms amplify coercion, but also how creativity, community, and experimentation can cultivate agency. Rather than accept these forces as inevitable, the episode asks how we might repurpose them as tools for critical thought and collective imagination.
Episode 5: Empathy, Knowledge and (Self) Government
=> live broadcast date : 7 November 2018 (FR) & 14 November 2018 (US)
In a moment when public life is saturated with fear, reputation, and the pressure to “be seen,” we ask what empathy and open knowledge might make possible. Can they transform institutions, soften systems of compliance and competition, and reimagine how we live and govern together? Drawing on the work of artists, researchers, and collective initiatives, the episode explores new models of coexistence in a complex world.
