Jock
/6
- Jock
- 2001
- video, color, sound
- 1min, 28sec
In the video work "Jock," Dorit Margreiter shows herself playing against a baseball training machine. Equipped with helmet and bat, she stands in front of the screen-texture of one of the practice cages. Tensely she awaits the ball. As she hits the ball back, Margreiter reacts to the motion with an eruptive sigh. The rhythmic staccato of this hitting-and-sighing pattern forms the installation’s acoustic backdrop. As in many of her works, Margreiter is reacting here to certain aspects of the medialization of space and everyday life in postindustrial societies. Just as in other works, in which she takes up terms and processes from film and television or from architecture and design in order to describe the medial construction of reality via their form and content, "Jock" refers to that latent disciplinary violence to which individuals subject themselves in order to live their lives in this city, as well as to the effort which they must expend to overlook the structural violence upon which exercise their wealth is built. Furthermore, this work plays subliminally with the construction of gender-specific roles. G.S.