A 16mm Warhol film of Edie Sedgwick sitting in front of a television monitor on which is playing a prerecorded videotape of herself. On the videotape, Edie is positioned on the left side of the frame, facing right; she is talking to an unseen person off-screen to our right. In the film, the “real” or “live” Edie Sedgwick is seated on the right side of the film frame, with her video image behind her, and she is talking to an unseen person off-screen to our left. The effect of this setup is that it sometimes creates the rather strange illusion that we are watching Edie in conversation with her own video image.
Direction
Warhol invented screen-within-screen tension before Zoom fatigue existed.
Production
The analog video feedback loop is accidentally gorgeous.
Director
Andy Warhol
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was one of the first art pieces to use prerecorded video feedback as a formal device, predating most 'video art' by years.
Edie reportedly couldn't remember what she'd said on the tape, so her 'live' responses are genuinely reactive—she's improvising against her own past self.
US
