Marc Losier

It took African-American sprinter Jesse Owens 10.3 seconds to capture the 100 metre gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. This artwork re-examines Leni Riefenstahl’s footage of Owens' performance, as seen in her film Olympia, by mediating it using a tube television monitor. Combined with audio excerpts from an interview held decades later between Owens and German reporters, this courageous achievement is slowed, drawing our attention to both the spectacle of the Olympic games and the rituals that exist between athletes and the audience. By positioning Owens as its storyteller, the work’s juxtaposition of archival materials attempt to circumvent filmmaker Riefenstahl’s account of the event, and conventional representations of athletes in the media. In this way, it offers an allusion to W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of double-consciousness, by demonstrating the multiple lenses through which Owens’ would have been seen, and conversely, the gazes through which he may have seen himself.