Dancing with Remotes

Carola Dertnig

Dancing with Remotes, 1997

Artwork text

In her video “Dancing with Remote”, the performance artist Carola Dertnig is dancing alone to the techno beats that fill her studio in New York, where she is living and working at the time. Meanwhile, she is also interacting with the fixed video camera recording the action. Using a remote control she holds in her hand as she is dancing, she continually stops and restarts the camera in the rhythm of the beats, editing the video’s image and sound directly while shooting. The spectators’ attention is increasingly drawn to that camera: as the recording medium, it is not visible as such, but with every temporary halt, the ecstatic flow of the techno beats and the dance performance is briefly interrupted, making the role of the camera as well as the screen on which the material is played back visible and even almost palpable. (Jürgen Tabor)