Keren Cytter
The Victim, 2006
The Victim, 2006
Digital video, 5 minutes, color/sound
Keren Cytter on "The Victim":
"The video will be mostly based on spoken text. When the characters stop talking their thoughts are still heard. A sentence of one character will be cut and decomposed by the words of another character. The text will overlap the images, sometimes with harmony
and other times with a comic dissonance. The words will connect the different images. Although the image will follow the events in the video, they will isolate the characters from their actions and from the objects around them. The images will do so, out of commitment to the text that even when it is referring to the plot, it will still move within the limits of the structure that enforces it and also forces the character to behave unnaturally.
The beginning and the end of the video are unclear. The beginning of the video will react to the end of the video. And the character
will be aware that they are running in a loop. The video will describe the relationships between five men who function together as a
family or a group of friends that meet for dinner. Those men also function as amateur actors in a video. The borderline between their
second profession – acting, and the character they are playing, is unclear. The actors are responding to their roles differently. The narrative perspective is shifting constantly from the actor’s awareness of their acting, to the motives and dilemmas of their characters. ..."
Read more about the characters (PDF)
"The video will be mostly based on spoken text. When the characters stop talking their thoughts are still heard. A sentence of one character will be cut and decomposed by the words of another character. The text will overlap the images, sometimes with harmony
and other times with a comic dissonance. The words will connect the different images. Although the image will follow the events in the video, they will isolate the characters from their actions and from the objects around them. The images will do so, out of commitment to the text that even when it is referring to the plot, it will still move within the limits of the structure that enforces it and also forces the character to behave unnaturally.
The beginning and the end of the video are unclear. The beginning of the video will react to the end of the video. And the character
will be aware that they are running in a loop. The video will describe the relationships between five men who function together as a
family or a group of friends that meet for dinner. Those men also function as amateur actors in a video. The borderline between their
second profession – acting, and the character they are playing, is unclear. The actors are responding to their roles differently. The narrative perspective is shifting constantly from the actor’s awareness of their acting, to the motives and dilemmas of their characters. ..."
Read more about the characters (PDF)