General Idea
Life & Work by Sarah E.K. Smith
Test Tube demonstrates General Idea’s ongoing
interest in critiquing the media through a
sophisticated appropriation of popular television
formats. The video speaks to the power of media
and provides a prophetic commentary on art and
commerce. The Stedelijk Museum and de Appel
collaborated in bringing General Idea to
Amsterdam. De Appel commissioned a video for
broadcast on Dutch television, while the Stedelijk
Museum provided a residency.1 The video was
subsequently displayed in an exhibition at the
Stedelijk Museum in 1979.
2
Like the majority of General Idea’s works
General Idea, Colour Bar Lounge, 1979, aluminum, glass, colour photographs, and printed cards; wall
unit: 63.5 x 377 cm, floor unit: 101.3 x 380 x 24 cm; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
in this era, Test Tube was related to The 1984
Miss General Idea Pavillion. The 1984 pageant
and its associated Pavillion formed a larger conceptual structure for the group: General
Idea invented narratives about these events and depicted them through their art projects.
In this video, the group focuses on the Pavillion’s Colour Bar Lounge. Jorge Zontal
explains how the lounge operates as a conceptual site: “We like to think of the Colour
Bar as sort of a cultural laboratory, where we can experiment with new cultural mixes
and here we isolate members of the art scene as our con