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Lennon, John; Ono, Yoko «Rape»
Lennon, John; Ono, Yoko, «Rape», 1969
Photograph: David Behl | © Lennon, John; Ono, Yoko
 


 
Lennon, John; Ono, Yoko «Rape»Lennon, John; Ono, Yoko «Rape»
Austria | 77' | Camera: Nic Knowland | Sound: Michael Lax, Ivan Sharrock, Christian Wangler, Tony Jackson | Music: John Lennon, Yoko Ono | Participants: Eva Majlath | Schnitt: Tony Trow, John Lennon, Yoko Ono | Edition / Production: Kuno Knoebel (ORF) / Apple Films
 

 Lennon, John; Ono, Yoko
«Rape»

«The premise for this [...] film comes from an Ono ‹film score,› published in 1968: ‹The cameraman will chase a girl on a street with a camera persistently until he corners her in an alley, and, if possible, until she is in a falling position.› The execution [...] is one of the most violent and sexually charged movies ever made–even if flesh never touches flesh. [...]
In one sense, Rape is a particularly brutal dramatization of the Warholian discovery that the camera‘s implacable stare disrupts ‹ordinary› behavior to enforce its own regime. In another, the film is a graphic metaphor for the ruthless surveillance that can theoretically attach itself to any citizen of the modern world.»

(source: James Hoberman, «John Lennon/Yoko Ono. Film No 6. Rape (Clip)», in CTRL [Space]. Rhetoric of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, Peter Weibel (eds), ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, 2002, p. 406f.)