Hajnal Németh

Desney & Destiny

Video, SD-PAL, stereo, 12', 2008

Performer: Desney Bailey

Camera: István Imreh

Sound: PlanetRoc Studio, Berlin

Recorded at: PlanetRoc Studio, Berlin

In the video “Desney & Destiny” the camera documents the recording of famous jazz songs in the isolated room of a recording studio. In fact, we are not shown too much of the space throughout the 12 minutes of the video, except for the back of the singer from a fixed camera angle.The recording situation is rendered in an impersonal and alienated manner, the voice of the singer all the more personal, sounding from speakers behind and in front of us. What we hear is not a harmonic stereo recording but two different voices: singing from the front and synchronously amplified breathing from the back. Standing between rhythmical “dragging” sounds and the impassioned flow of the singing voice we are more than close, we are virtually inside the instrument, the body to which we can’t even connect a face.The most expressive epithet for this video work would be bipolar, in terms of both form and content: along with the duality of the personal and the impersonal it is based on the converse directions moving inward and outward.

...

Photo: István Imreh