Video-Ping-Pong

Ernst Caramelle

Video-Ping-Pong, 1974

Artwork text

Ernst Caramelle’s artistic approach follows in the tradition of concept art, which considers the idea as equal to the artistic product, regardless of whether it is realized. At the IV. Internationalen Malerwochen in Graz in 1974, Caramelle started working with video and, in his characteristically ironic fashion, recorded a series of video performances documented as Videolandschaften (Video Landscapes). In these recordings, Caramelle focuses specifically on the place in the space covered by the monitor. He completes the interrupted viewing experience, making the area covered by the monitor visible again. This is jarring, as Caramelle puts it: “In this instance, video technology is being used not to reproduce an action, but to generate pure stills. Extensions or defamiliarizations of interrupted reality.”1 (Ernst Caramelle) The same year, he deepened his interest as a research fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT in Cambridge in the US, where he created the installation Video Ping-Pong (1974), an icon of early video art. It shows the artist’s exploration of the reality of media in a subsequent step: A shelf unit with a live monitor is placed at either end of a real Ping-Pong table. Displayed on each are images of Ping-Pong players in action. Their fast-paced game has the ball speeding from the left to right monitor, creating the illusion of a game between the devices. The space between is bridged by an acoustic fiction: The ball can be heard but not seen. Once the game begins, the media reality of the video monitors is called into question: Are they showing a live broadcast or a recording of the game? (Doris Leutgeb) 1 Ernst Caramelle, “Ernst Caramelle,” in Werke der IX. internationalen Malerwochen in der Steiermark, ed. Wilfried Skreiner, exh. cat. (Graz: Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, 1974), unpaginated.