Camera Opera
2-channel video installation with sound: 2 synchronized monitors on wheeled stands, speakers on tripods, and studio lights | 2008 | 11:50 loop
Camera Opera was filmed on the set of Das Duell, a German current-affairs television program. Here, the conventional newscasting roles are scrambled: the cameras themselves are the subject and their performance becomes the action, while the anchorwoman hovers between avatar and witness. Five camera operators are directed to perform a sequence of choreographed movements around her silent and stoic figure. Circling around the studio, they focus on her, then pan out to reveal the set, equipment, lighting, audience seating, and each other. The Strauss waltzes piped into the studio to pace the camera operators’ movements are retained in the final two-channel installation, where they are synchronized with the images. The work reveals the ways in which the space of the broadcast studio is organized for, by, and through cameras. It also highlights the set’s own performativity: a codified space where relations meet infrastructure. Engaging the Brechtian alienation effect, the cameras turn on themselves, thus subverting their traditional role as information relays, exposing their participation in the construction of events, and asserting their status as subjects.
Credits
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Appearing :
Pamela Schlatterer (journalist) -
Camera operators:
Karsten Stoll, Pit Fischer, Sven Ickerodt, and Karsten Hillmer -
Crane operator:
Matthias Wahle -
Assistant director:
Götz Filenius -
Video engineer:
Max Wallrabe -
Lighting:
Christian Kaminski -
Production assistant:
Daniel Sippel -
Editing:
Mathieu-Bouchard-Malo -
Production support:
n-tv -
Postproduction support:
OBORO New Media Lab -
Funding:
Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Canada Council for the Arts
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Related Texts
Lynne Marsh
Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and Rimouski and Musée régional de Rimouski, 2008
Where do we fit in? Canadian artist Lynne Marsh's installations at the MAC question the individual's position within mass society
Author: Christine Redfern
Gazette, Montreal, January 2, 2009
In Review: Lynne Marsh, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
Author: David Jagr
Canadian Art, Summer 2009
Crossovers: Lynne Marsh, exhibition review Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
Author: James D Campbell
Border Crossing, Issue 109, February 2009
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