For half a year, Sabine Troendle sends out a weekly broadcast from Texas: photographs and text via email and a link to her website, where the latest edition is posted each Monday morning at 8 am, Swiss time. Stories are told from America, Texas. These are the observations of a foreigner, who is quite conscious of the effect that everyday Texan life, which is lived as a matter of course, has on her Swiss perception and value judgments. Texas Reliable News is conceived as a broadcast. The term "broadcasting" is generally used for non-commercial audio or video transmissions via radio, TV and other mass media. As this format normally forgoes advenising, it benefits from a certain independence.
Sabine Troendle is a photographer, artist and author of the Texas Reliable News. She thus creates a format that allows her to operate as a reporter on the one hand, while emphasizing the importance of (and the desire for) alternative, decelerated forms of information in today's media landscape on the other hand.
The Reliable News is supplemented by an essay (in German) by Jörg Huber, which sheds light on the highly charged topic of reporting, its manifestations and its transformations.
TRN 01
Texas Reliable News
First transmission of the weekly broadcast of Texas Reliable News with its homebase in Austin, Texas. We dedicate this edition to a few buildings emerging from the universe of undetected beauty, victims of circumstances and the long forgotten.
»Work will begin as soon as possible to raze the Treehouse ...« The Treehouse, Austin 2010
»On the other hand, those plans may have been put on hold
given the recent market downturn.« The Treehouse, Austin 2011
»Gene is gone and it’s under new management. They are rebuilding the old Gene’s PoBoys and transforming it into a grocery and sustainable organic deli.«
Gene’s New Orleans Style Food, Austin 2010
»For Sale« Grace Mission United Church of Christ, Luling 2010
»The sleepy Texas town of McMahan is for sale and $ 215,000 gets you the whole kit and caboodle« McMahan 2006
Abandoned building between Luling and Lockhart 2010
Cain’s Construction Co., Luling 2010
Car Dealership in Austin 2009 ...
... and 2010
Building between Luling and Houston 2009
The quotes are from all kinds of sources, such as the Internet, sales brochures, ads or common knowledge.
TRN 02
America’s Having Fun
11:00 p.m.
5:30 p.m.
3:15 p.m.
10:30 a.m.
10:20 p.m.
6:55 p.m.
1:50 a.m.
TRN 03
The Postman Always Comes Around
The Ice Cream Man
The postman comes around and asks about 914 Elizabeth
Street. “This is 916”, I say, and our heads turn towards
the empty and feral piece of land.
“What happened to 914?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want it?” he asked, putting forth his hand to
me with the mail for 914 Elizabeth Street.
“No thank you.”
”So what should I do with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you want it?”
“I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Me neither.”
A pause arises and we both look at the piece of land.
After a while the postman’s focus turns back to his
undeliverable mail, he shakes his head and asks:
“Why would I get mail for a house that doesn’t exist?”
and leaves.
Breakdown, Shipwreck, Malfunction, Business Interruption, Error – Failure in short – here it is just as respected as Success.
You tap one’s back and ask about future plans. Failing is a new dream’s awakening.
“First, I’m a wife. Second, I’m a mother and third, I’m a farmer. No, wait. First, I’m a wife, second, I’m a doctor’s wife and then the rest.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Conversation at the post office between a middle aged woman and a really old man, who likes Oscar Wilde.
We will never catch up with them and we will never hold their naivety. We lack soul and daredevilry of zero point of a culture, potency of unculture. Why for the world can one be European?
Jean Baudrillard in »Amerika«
This Hollywood ideology of the Good being rewarded and the Evil being punished, it doesn’t work. It gives people the feeling of failure.
A.L. Kennedy
Now what’s the difference between a casual janitor and an artist making his living as a janitor?
TRN 04
Rockne
In the early 1900s Rockne, a rural community that started out as Walnut Creek in the 1840s, changed its name to Lehmanville due to the establishment of a post office in the Lehman Store with Martin Lehman as the postmaster. In the 1920s it again changed its name to Hilbigville, thanks to the opening of W. M. Hilbig & Sons General Store. In 1931 children were given the choice to vote for either Rockne or Kilmer, after Knute Rockne, the famous football coach who had just died in a plane crash or Joyce Kilmer, a Catholic poet who had died in the battle fields of World War One. The saying goes that the boys were voting for Rockne and the girls for Kilmer. The vote was a draw and if it weren’t for one girl, who changed her mind the day after the voting, the town would probably be nameless.
Sacred Heart Catholic Church
Sacred Heart Parish Hall
Sacred Heart School
Sacred Heart Cemetery
Leon’s Country Store – built in 1929, the owner Herman Goertz took the place over from his dad Leon, who bought it in 1969. It’s open from 10 am to whenever.
Leon’s Country Store
Leon’s Country Store
TRN 05
A Conversation
A conversation about America.
Please welcome:
Jean Baudrillard, French philosopher
Ralph Ellison, American writer
Rudolph Giuliani, former Mayor of New York
Franz Kafka, Austrian-Hungarian writer
Rick Perry, Governor of Texas
Oscar Wilde, Irish writer and poet
Kafka: Mother has been without work for two days already, not even the smallest bit of money was available anymore, the day was performed out in the open without a bite to eat.
Perry: Dark economic clouds are dissipating into an emerging blue sky of opportunity.
Wilde: Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Ellison: And remember, the world is possibility if only you’ll discover it.
Perry: We had a $10 billion budget deficit when we got here in January of 2003. We cut that budget deficit; we did not raise taxes; we came back in ‘05, and we had an $ 8 billion surplus. That’s how fast it can happen.
Baudrillard: America is believed to be the embodiment of a real utopia, the implementation of everything ever dreamt of, justice, excess, law, wealth and freedom. American society believes it and all others do as well.
Perry: The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we inhabit are not only critical elements in the quality of life we enjoy, they are a reflection of the majesty of our Creator.
Giuliani: Leaders need to be optimists. Their vision is beyond the present.
Perry: We must keep America moving back to preeminence because our values and conservative ideas are the world’s greatest hope.
Perry: We need to stop apologizing for celebrating life.
Wilde: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
All the quotes are absolutely and completely torn out of context and do not necessarily give an account of their original meanings.
TRN 06
Business
An economic system in which goods and services are exchanged for one another or money, on the basis of their perceived worth. Every business requires some form of investment and a sufficient number of customers to whom its output can be sold at profit on a consistent basis. thefreedictionary.com
2010: out of business
2009: in business
2011: in business
2009: in business
2009: in business
2010: in business
2009: out of business
2011: out of busines
2009: out of business
2010: out of business
2009: in business
2011: out of business
2010: out of business