then staging something like a gallery opening in the television studio before the broadcast begins. But the programs themselves are completely produced by Schum, and both for him and the artists working closely with him the individual contributions definitely have the status of an autonomous work of art. This is also why Schum refused to take notice of the desire for more information or commentaries raised by the first broadcast. In fact he insists on aesthetic autonomy: «During all the 38 minutes of the ‹Land Art› show there is no word spoken. No explanation. I think an art object realized in regard of the medium TV does not need a spoken explanation.»[57]

His keen sense for developments in contemporary art led him straight to the most important artists of the day.[58] Many of these artists made pieces for a television film for the first time with Schum—very few of them carried on working with film or video after Schum's early death. The medium is not in the foreground in their contributions; they are interested in consistently conveying their artistic approach, and

so no electronic image processing is used. «In a television object the artist can reduce his object to an attitude, to a mere gesture as an indication of his concept. The art object presents itself as a unit made up of the idea, a visual presentation and the artist as demonstrator,» says Schum in his introduction to «Identifications.» In a similar way, he combines contradictory roles in a single person. He simultaneously mediates between television and the artists, is the curator of the program and the producer of the contributions. But his attitude, which is consistently slanted towards art, inevitably leads to increasing difficulties with the conditions of television, which are tuned to wide-ranging acceptance. His hopes for making the «Fernsehgalerie» into a permanent institution were not fulfilled, and so finally he withdrew into the context of art to set up a «Videogalerie» to sell videos as signed objects in limited editions. He thus gives up his original vision of a work of art that exists only on television, but remains equally unsuccessful on the original-fixated art market.