Where's the remote
Performed with Aleksi Holkko and Pie Kär
Video editing Oo Condit with Rosie Swayne
Sound Rosie Swayne
Text Oo Condit
Video previously published in Nivel 14: Networked Actor Theory (2021)
In 2020, as Covid-19 closed down public institutions and working remote became the status quo, I wanted to revisit the final (and to me, dearest) performance version of remote control human actualised with Aleksi Holkko and Pie Kär in 2019. We had no video documentation of those intimate, bespoke performances created individually for each invited guest, but I wanted to grasp something of their atmosphere, to manufacture a trace of sorts. I wrote a script for a voice-over to give Aleksi and Pie a sense of the mood I had in mind, and then we filmed their performances through zoom.
Both performers created a remote control performance for each other, using the other as their avatar, performing through the other in their own home. Thus, on the video, you see Aleksi as Pie's avatar in Pie's home, acting out Pie's performance they created specially for Aleksi, and vice versa. The avatar became both the stage and the primary audience for the performances they acted out together, the zoom image between them acting as a mirror interface they could both see.
Camera, voice, body, image -a strange Narcissus version of an apparatus that always managed to befuddle our senses.