Entitled 'Empower Me' she got people to play her hostage and then made a suitably disturbing, grimy, hostage style portrait of them. Text accompanies the image and comes courtesy of the person playing her hostage. She gets them to tell her what their demands/ransoms are and these get put onto the image. As the website shows, these are then elaborated in longer sentences or explanations that sit next to the project.
For the co-operation, submission and interaction part of her work, it's extremely relevant for me but I also find it interesting. People agreed to having a blindfold put on them and posing in a hostage style pose. Despite it all being false and an actually safe situation, it still impresses me that she talked people into doing it. The demands they then write are extremely interesting.
Witt's work is often thought-provoking and politically motivated. Often it's making a statement or challenging popular belief or politics in general. I watched some of the videos on her site and all of her work is interesting and quite different to most work I've come across of late.
In a gallery, 'Empower me' is presented as a video installation. The signs they made are displayed on the wall and the video is played on television screens. I think if you walked into a room and saw a hostage situation on a screen, you'd immediately jump to the wrong conclusion or presume the worst. This is what makes the project so interesting. The comment on society and that perhaps we are held hostage in our countries due to politics and the way things are is provocative and sparks debate.
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