Part of Trafó’s transdisciplinary focus Nothing About Us Without Us.

Hosted by a hamster named Heidi, C-TV (If I Tell You I Like You...) is a speculative TV station that questions heteronormative and ableist norms of repressive societies and seeks multifaceted politics and aesthetics of radical inclusion and accessibility. The film imagines what the TV of the future could be, creating space for queer and crip individuals to share their perspectives and experiences.

Onscreen, we see wild hamsters with X-ray eyes, a zombie soldier on the telethon phone, a grandiose performance in a song contest, and at the center, a talk show offering an alternative to the heteronormative TV mainstream, featuring interviews and workplace portraits of the two guests Em Gruber (of the Office of the Monitoring Committee for the rights of people with disabilities) and Iris Kopera (Self-Advocacy Center for People with Learning Difficulties); and in between, quotes by the late artist-author Ianina Ilitcheva interpreted in sign language, which give C-TV a kind of chapter structure while the whole thing is framed by newsroom reports about mysterious seismographic tremors to society.

C-TV (If I Tell You I Like You...) by Cordula Thym and Eva Egermann, about the fictional television station of the same name, is a “colorful genre multiverse” (Madeleine Bernstorff) that links utopian sci-fi cinema, docufiction, performance, readings and more, and thereby challenges the ableist, heteronormative media world. People with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and neurodiversity are often presented as “narrative prostheses” (David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder), and thus a kind of counterfoil to notions of “wholeness” or “normality”, mostly seen purely as recipients rather than producers of culture. In contrast, directors Egermann and Thym, in a playful, humorous, poetic way, while experimenting with form and structure, create a world (including open captions) in which participation and inclusion, agency and visibility are realized far more strongly than in our current world.

In 2023 the film received the Diagonale Award for Innovative Cinema.

Eva Egermann (1979, Austria) is an artist based in Vienna. Her artistic and textual practice revisits activist movements and various subcultures across time, and reworks the categories and political conditions of ability and nonconforming bodies. In 2012, she initiated Crip Magazine, a self-published magazine project. Her recent exhibitions include Bergen Assembly, various venues, Bergen (2019); When the Sick Rule the World, Alte Fabrik, Rapperswil (2020); KISS, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, (2020–2021); If Time Is Still Alive, Camera Austria, Graz (2021); Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (2021); Total Museum Seoul, South Korea (2022); and 17th Istanbul Biennale (2022) or In the meantime, midday comes around, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2022-2023).

Cordula Thym (1977, Austria) is a director and film editor. Her participatory and queer-feminist filmmaking puts marginalized perspectives front and center, whether in relation to the body, language, education or contemporary history. Since 2009 she has realized the two award-winning documentaries Amorous, Antiquated, Audacious - Stories of lesbian (in)visibility in Vienna in the 50s and 60s and FtWTF - female to what the fuck on the topic of gender identities (together with Katharina Lampert).



Director: Eva Egermann, Cordula Thym
Script: Eva Egermann, Cordula Thym
Cinematography: Magdalena Fischer, Caroline Bobek
Music: Armin Lorenz
Sound: Theda Schifferdecker, Sophie Wasserburg
Montage: Cordula Thym, Eva Egermann
Sound Design: Lenja Gathmann
Actor/Actress: Em Gruber, Iris Kopera, Eva Egermann, Barbara Schuster, Luiz Javier Murillo Zuniga, Hicran Ergen, Cordula Thym, Ani Gülgün Mayr
Art Direction: Berivan Sayici
Costumes: Berivan Sayici
Producer: Eva Egermann, Cordula Thym