During Wobby Workout, a work period at Dutch autonomous illustration platform Wobby.club, Mika Schalks produced a fictional TV guide, Normal Ordinary SIGNAL. During this residency, he continued his graduation work about the queerness of television. The TV channels he created for that work inspired him to dive deeper into the characters themselves, especially the lady in green.
In the TV guide, Mika explores a fictional story of the lonely existence of the lady in green, leading perhaps the last television channel on earth. While stuck in her daily rhythm, running the TV studio all by herself, one day she gets a blue letter that reveals something she had forgotten over the years: someone was actually watching her on television.
Normal Ordinary Signal is a vision from the television of a child’s perspective. Mika states; “This is exactly what I used to think about television as a child, this TV studio is run by one singular person. She just manages everything. She is the presenter of the show, but also the camera woman and director. The lady in green truly reflects how I felt working on this project, because like many artists, I am my own boss. I too have many titles within my own company, I too have to think about the audience of the work I create, while sometimes I just want to create without specific purpose.” Mika came to realise, like the lady in green, that his work is not all happening in his head, but people are actually watching.
Apart from working on the backstory of a character that he created, for Mika, it was also very important to make sure the illustrations in this story would feel tangible. In his research about camp aesthetics in children’s television, for instance in Dutch children’s shows from the 90s, he learned that many shows felt like they were handmade. Sets and costumes would be extremely colourful, and recognisable as being what they were: TV sets and costumes, not real life. They embraced the charm of hand painted backgrounds and unscripted madness. Mika comments; “Critics might say: well, anyone can make that! And they might be somewhat right. Having shows with no filter and a relatively low budget, made TV feel extremely accessible. This was the feeling I was trying to grasp while drawing this comic with my pencil and ruler in hand.”
The NO Signal TV guide was Risograph printed in 4 colours at Wobby.club in Tilburg with the help of Bobbi Oskam, and supervised by Marjolein Schalk. The publication was first presented on April 7th 2023 at Wobby Club Night in Tilburg. To celebrate the finalisation of the project and to demonstrate the connection of Mika and the character, Mika performed and read the comic in drag, as the “Lady in Green”. Printed an edition of 150 and published by Wobby.club, 2023, it is available through Mika’s Instagram or the wobby.club.
This project was funded by Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie.
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