Gewaltvideo

Gewaltvideo is based on a collection of data on acts of physical violence. Both documentations of publicly broadcasted mixed martial arts fights and privately filmed scenes of violence from the former video portal LiveLeak formed the basis of a comprehensive collection. This moving image material was processed in its entirety using OpenPose. The system analyzes the informational depth of each individual image pixel and uses it to identify figures and their movement patterns. This creates a data set that can be used to avatarize the previously processed images.

At the same time, however, it is also a process that leads to the emptying of the images by depriving the actors of any external identifying features and situational contextuality, hence reducing the material to simple representations of the movement data, i.e. to the act of violence, in basic colors, as combinations of strokes.

The final material was selected and assembled along two signifiers: the motif of dissolution of boundaries and the recurring social constellation of victim, perpetrator and the third party. The resulting repetitive rhythm of the imagery is juxtaposed with an auditive narration: a coordinated confrontation of the Soviet chorale Pushkin's Garland (They beat the Dawn), 1979, by Georgi Wassiljewitsch Swiridow and the adlibs¹ soundtrack of Bustin At Em, 2010, by the US rapper Waka Flocka Flame (real name Juaquin James Malphurs).

¹ adlibs (lat. ad libitum) is a vocal practice within the trap genre in which short interjections or filler words are interwoven into the actual lyrics.