Public presentation for these performative research: 3/11/2023, "In the Works. Makings and Unmakings of the Video Essay", International conference at the Lucerne School of Art and Design, Switzerland. Organization, Johannes Binotto, Video essay research team, HSLU Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. 5/10/2023, Collective exhibition "La Copie #2", ZonneKlopper, Bruxelles, with Théophile Gay-Mazas 21/01/2023, galerie Ygrec, Aubervilliers (France), program "The Cure", curation Jeff Guess and Judith Perron, École Nationale d'Arts Paris-Cergy. In this visual and performative setup, my body is embedded in a video of the Olympic Games. We focus on a specific sequence from the 1996 Olympics, when the gymnast Kerri Strug injured her ankle but continued the competition to win the gold medal for her team… By being directly caught in the image, I try to connect with Kerri Strug to question her about what she might be feeling. This strategy of imitation allowed by the live inlay-overlay effect (easily available on software like Zoom) is a way to investigate the mechanisms of empathy we engage with other images when it is common to become images ourselves (from selfie to videoconferencing). It seems now that we can share images with our heroes, as much as our heroes seem to share our personal spaces. This work is at the crossroads of philosophy, media studies and visual arts, and follows a methodology of performance as research. Thus, we unfold a set of issues specific to this dialogue with images. Allowing physical empathy, exploring image contamination By embedding myself directly into the video I am watching on my computer (overlay and inlay effects), I follow the athletes' movements as if I were disinhibiting my mirror neurons! I am directly summoned by the images, animated by them, they contaminate my own movements. Investigating images through our bodies This dance with the images allows us to question our relations with the athletes’ bodies, but also to highlight the way these worldwide sporting events are staged and how this influences us. Indeed, I do not only imitate the body movements of Kerri Strug, but also the editing, playing on the scale differences between the different framings of the recorded image and the image of my own body that I produce and control live (by moving towards and away from the camera on my computer). Therefore, there are two points of view (from the two videos) that must coexist. Thus, the choreography sheds light on how certain fundamental characteristics of the image function: framing and angle of view. Mapping images into our personal space With this technical setup, we are able to relocate bi-dimensional images into our three-dimensional viewing spaces. This is because matching the positions of our distant cameras involves moving around in space (again: it is about choreographing a framed body). This allows us to deploy the image both on the ground (with a series of marks and reference points) and on the body (with the learning of different body postures). Questioning body control We explore a twofold system of body control through a camera and screen setup. Gymnast Kerri Strug's body is subjected to a sequence of movements, precisely evaluated by a jury and closely monitored by cameras and screens; and I am myself embedded in this sequence from the Olympic Games, my body framed by a camera and controlled by an algorithm that tracks my movements to constantly cut out the contours of my body on the image, distinguishing between background and figure. In this double control of bodies, however, a burlesque dialogue infiltrates: I struggle to follow the gymnasts' movements, in a clumsy tracking that shows not only the intensity (which takes an absurd turn) of certain situations (what is this body doing floating upside down in the air?), but also how the large-scale sporting events are filmed (how is this body tracked, what grand and collective narrative is made of this body through the staging of different viewpoints: camera, jury, coach, team, parents, audience). In these disjointed perspectives, our two bodies, mine and Kerri's, enter into a dialogue raising existential questions about the narratives of our female bodies in images.