erase remake
erase remake is the film version of a performance that Jan Machacek and Martin Siewert first presented in 2006 in Vienna and Trento (Italy). A camera module, mounted inside of a scanner, renders precise close-ups and pans of its surroundings. The picture source "scans" the body of the performer, placing it in a charged field between live-action, recording, and reproduction. The music by Martin Siewert employs various improvisation / composition / reproduction techniques - a sounding out of possibilities for the reproducibility of note, sound, and song structures. erase remake directs attention to detail and micro-structures, subjecting spontaneously generated images to extremely diverse scenarios of acceleration and deceleration. What emerges is a quasi-archeological occupation with the relationship of one´s own identity to the body.
(Jan Machacek, Martin Siewert)
erase remake creates an entirely unusual show. The performative video choreographs the powerful merger of body and image in the harsh light of a scanner. A reversal of relations occurs: the body is not the object of the image, the scanner and its integrated camera are, instead, objects of the body. The body presses and surges on the scanner´s glass surface, searches out the scanner´s rising and falling light and provokes its aggressive scanning. Nonetheless, it remains unclear whether we are seeing a picture of skin or the skin of a picture. We are witnesses to bodily microscopy driven by the sound pattern in dance-like ecstasies. With his performance video, Jan Machacek achieves a media-ontological solution to "noli me tangere" "touch me", says the machine and create your counterpart.
(Marc Ries)
Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt
erase remake / texte français
"erase remake" élabore un spectacle totalement hors norme. La vidéo performative met en chorégraphie la formidable imbrication du corps et de limage sous la lumière crue du scanner. Il se produit alors un renversement des relations : ce nest plus le corps qui est lobjet de limage, mais plutôt le numériseur et la caméra intégrée qui deviennent objets pour le corps. Le corps saplatit, se vautre sur la vitre du scanner, recherchant la lumière de la machine qui se déplace, défiant sa captation agressive. Impossible néanmoins de savoir si lon voit limage de la peau ou la peau de limage. Nous assistons à lélaboration de microscopies charnelles, entraînées dans des danses extatiques par les schémas sonores. Avec sa vidéo performance, Jan Machacek réussit à anéantir le « noli me tangere » en allant à lessence même du médium. « Touche-moi », dit la machine, et crée ton image à l'identique. (Marc Ries)
Traduction: Françoise Guiguet
erase remake
2007
Austria
7 min