Over the Rainbow
1999
Video, 3'54".
Materials: single channel video with audio (transferred from VHS)
Collection: Collectie M HKA, Antwerpen / Collectie Vlaamse Gemeenschap (Inv. no. BK009501).
Over the Rainbow is Anthea Hamilton's first video work. The artist sings the song of the same name, performed by Judy Garland in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, and makes it sadder by slowing it down. By inverting the image during post-production, the work manages to turn the original lovely nature of the excerpt into something monstrous. Although Over the Rainbow was made while the artist was still a student, the work contains several seeds of interest that run throughout her subsequent body of work. For example, the idea of picking out images from popular culture, sampling them, distorting them and making them her own, giving the seemingly familiar images an alienating effect, is also applied in works such as Karl Lagerfeld Bean Counter and Luke Perry (as lynchpin). In addition to its status as an absolute classic, Hamilton is also interested in the fact that The Wizard of Oz embodies the transition from black and white to Technicolor imagery. Her fascination with film, music and the technology by which images are (re)produced, as well as her sensitivity to nostalgia, appear frequently in later work as well.
