Looping the Loop

Video Installation (2009)
Production Le Fresnoy

In Looping the Loop Dinozord, a young Hip Hop dancer from Kinshasa (DR Congo) traces the roots of this trans-historical and trans-national dance form, looking to traditional African dance as well as to forms of entertainment dance from Broadway and Hollywood to MTV.

Presented as an installation, the life-size video projection is displayed next to a still image taken by Congolese filmmaker Petna Katondolo, who’s reportages on life in Goma (East DRC) for Metropolis TV (NL), are a source of inspiration for this project. The image and the ambient sound that accompany it, come from footage the filmmaker shot during a 10 day long festival he organized in October 2008. Simultaneous with a regional conflict backed by international players over the area’s natural resources, the festival culminated in a dance competition that was attended by thousands of local spectators as well as refugees displaced by the war.

In collaboration with: Dinozord & Petna Ndaliko Katondolo / Concept: Ula Sickle / Sound concept & design: Yann Leguay / Camera: Vincent Pinckaers / Camera Assistant & Electrician: Sylvain Briant / Editing: Petna Ndaliko Katondolo & Ula Sickle / Additional image & sound track (2nd screen) Petna Ndaliko Katondolo (Alkebu, Goma) / Production: Le Fresnoy

. . . .

"It is not possible to think about empowerment, resistance and labor without considering the connection between the body and technology. In the video Dinozord is performing in front of a blue screen, a technique that enables one to cut directly into the image and transform it with digital means. The aesthetics of this production site, especially the situating of the body within it, has become common place in advertising, the visual and design industries as if we were already aware of the power of the capitalist market to cut not only through the image but through the body itself. The image of Dinozord in front of this blue background could easily be seen as part of this self-reflexive economy. But the difference here is the opening up of the whole context of the artistic research – the crowd, the dance competition, the civil war around natural resources and the global economy’s interests. The context becomes part of the work and makes it impossible to see merely a formal analysis of movements."

"Black Body, Blue Screen: technology, economic exploitation and globalization" - Politicizing Contemporary Dance by Ana Hoffner