On the Waterfront 2.0

Bleeding Marlon Brando bumps against a multicolored, digital wall. Marlon Brando`s injured face disappears continuously behind animated, colored pixels, each one of them seperatedly animated. The scene is taken from the black-and-white film „On The Waterfront “. The representation of blood in black and white movies is utterly abstract. Digital coding of „old “material enhances this effect, since here a monochrome photographic film reveals its “hidden” colors. In order to show the decoding and to emphasize the black wound, I edited , digitized and partly destroyed the close ups of the bleeding face. This hereby created “decoding artefacts” resembling unlikely test pattern, which look like an abstract work of art. I chose takes from Elia Kazan´s movie „On The Waterfront” because the content of the movie (the desperate fight of the workers against a corrupt, exploitative system) becomes visible in the expression on Marlon Brando's face and opens an additional stream of meaning. The sound derives from image cuts and distortions, classical sound overlaped with digital interferences. My work “On The Waterfront 2.0” shows my fundamental interest in “the dramatic”. My process to create this video piece is like taking away the sugar coating in order to reveal what's underneath: the medium itself finally becomes a tool.