Hold Me (distant love) explores how technology is changing our understanding of intimacy and power.

The work is a duet for one video performer whose body appears cut up on three stacked televisions and one live performer. When does the digital gestalt become human in the perception of the viewer? Who has holds the audiences gaze longer, the live performer or the televised body? What is this relationship between these two bodies? Who holds the power; the projected body, the live body, the editor, the audience? I am interested in the artificial but very real sense of one-sided intimacy that develops between an editor/audience and their subject. I am interested in the complex power dynamic that operates between a camera person/editor and their subject and how this is read/not read by an audience.

Concept/direction/performance/video: Olive Bieringa

Video performance: Otto Ramstad

Performances

2008

Renovate, the Ritz Theater, Minneapolis

2007

Nous n’irons pas à Avignon, Gare au Théâtre, Paris

3 performances at the Bryant Lake Bowl, Minneapolis