“Do you think I can learn to tightrope?”   
“Oh yeah, walking on the wire is just like walking meditation.” (1)    

Janine Antoni's artistic focus lies somewhere between sculpture and performance art. Her works' serene to seemingly extreme actions generally entail physical exertion and the use of different materials, which are remodeled and then presented as visible results. Even when the work involves sculptures and installations, the action performed on and with them-and   thus their process-related character - is always a key issue. The same thing also applies for her video work in which performative, formerly ritualized processes and their disturbing self-perceptions are not just documented, but become almost physically comprehensible and accessible through their striking   clarity and intensity. Touch is a short video loop of a tightrope act in   which Antoni is seen balancing on a rope against a backdrop of a summer beach panorama. The scene was filmed on the beach at Freeport on the Bahamas, in front of the house that belongs to her parents. [...]

(1) This was a question Janine Antoni asked Kevin O’Keefe and the answer he gave, in ART:21: Touch & Moor, Interview with Janine Antoni, in: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/antoni/clip1.html, as of: December 17, 2009.

Peter Friese
Translation: Sarah Trenker


Catalogue excerpt
fast forward 2. The Power of Motion
Media Art Sammlung Goetz
Editors: Ingvild Goetz and Stephan Urbaschek
Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2010

Janine Antoni, Touch, 2002
Single-channel video projection, color, sound
Edition 5/5 (+ 2 a. p.)
9' 37"