Jens Pecho
»Medley« (2008)
video/sound installation, b/w, sound, 7 min, loop
Courtesy Jens Pecho
Due to strong compression and the use of different codes, videos on the internet are often displayed differently. This is especially notable in »Medley«. For comparison please watch the Java version of the video, which displays the scrolling text often better than Flash. » Video
Jens Pecho was invited by Matthias Müller (Professor for Experimental Film, Academy of Media Arts, Cologne)
Video/sound installation, b/w, sound, 7 min, loop
Continuous white text is running across a black monitor screen – identifiable as a transcription of lyrics from HipHop, Black Metal and other pieces of music only by means of headphones. In his video work with the innocuous title »Medley« (2008), Jens Pecho arranges 143 short fragments of music from various genres into a new composition. Revealing hidden subtexts through material from extraneous media is a strategy commonly employed in Found Footage. Pecho, by contrast, in his selection of »toxic artefacts« (Sharon Sandusky), focuses on the obvious: on the blatantly homophobic content of mass distributed products from some segments of pop culture. Something emerges behind the drastic and obscene language from which »Medley« quotes that is, in the conventional sense, decidedly unmanly: hysteria, a naked fear of emasculation. More provocatively and more subversively than any theoretical discourse might, Pecho’s concentrate demonstrates the explosive charge and impact of products, whose power to shape minds is allowed to play out on a globalised, predominately youth market. »Medley« refrains from making any distancing, concerned comment or pedagogical appeal. Pecho much rather adapts the forced pace and the graphic means of the material he refers to. In a radical act of appropriation, he claims for himself that same right to freedom of artistic expression cited by openly homophobic artists when they are criticised publicly for their calls to denigrate, persecute and murder gay men.
Matthias Müller
