allowing viewers a choice of programs for the first time—provided they had equipped themselves with the appropriate set-top box. It should be remembered that until then, in Germany at least, the viewer's only means of interaction with the TV image was the on-off switch.

Vostell's TV Decollage

Wolf Vostell's first public show of TV works took place from May 22—June 8, 1963 in New York, in other words only two months after Paik's Wuppertal project. According to the invitation, the private, non-commercial Smolin Gallery was presenting «Wolf Vostell & Television Decollage & Decollage Posters & Comestible Decollage.» As this suggests, the exhibition, similarly to Paik's, consisted of several sections, which Vostell lists as follows: «6 television sets with various programs / the picture is decollaged—6 fusions / pots with plastic airplanes that melt in the heat—6 grilled chickens on a canvas / to be eaten by the public from the picture—6 chicken incubators / on canvas / the chicken should hatch on the day of the exhibition—everyone receives an ampoule of liquid he can use to smudge magazines.»[22] The said ampoule of liquid was

handed to visitors at the opening, and photographs show that this offer of «Do it yourself Dé-collage» for magazines hanging on the wall was enthusiastically received. Vostell uses this procedure himself in his creative work. It introduces the term ‹dé-collage,› which Vostell coined in the 1950s, when his work was still driven by pulling down posters in the manner of the ‹affiches lacerées› by Hains, Villeglé and Rotella. Unlike the collage, which creates new layers of meaning, the ‹dé-collage› is an aggressive act of tearing down, smudging and disturbing found pictorial structures, which could be posters, magazines or television images.

Shortly before the exhibition opened, the YAM Festival in New Brunswick, also organized by the Smolin Gallery, took place on May 19, 1963, featuring happenings and actions by Dick Higgins, Chuck Ginnever, Allan Kaprow, Yvonne Rainer, Wolf Vostell and La Monte Young. Vostell's action was called «TV Burying.» In the course of it the television had cream cake thrown at it while a program was on, and an old oil painting was stabbed and hung in front of the TV image. Then the set was wrapped up in barbed wire in