Video (no sound)
2:03 minutes
Variable dimensions
2004
Richard Humann • She Can’t Stand The Rain, 2:03 minutes, Video (no sound), 2004
In She Can’t Stand the Rain, Richard Humann explores the instability of recorded images through the intersection of music, performance, and technological distortion. The silent video features vocalist Susan Darmeinto performing Ann Peebles’ song I Can’t Stand the Rain in front of a microphone. Although the source is a recognizable musical performance, Humann transforms it through a process that disrupts the relationship between the singer, her movements, and the image captured on screen.
The video is subjected to successive analog and digital tape distortions before being recorded and manipulated at fast-forward speed. This process produces irregularities in the image, breaking down the visual continuity of the original performance. The singer remains identifiable, yet her presence is continually interrupted by the instability of the recording. The result occupies an uncertain territory between representation and abstraction, where the image alternately reveals and obscures the figure it contains.
The work’s title reinterprets the rain in Peebles’ song as a visual phenomenon. Rather than depicting weather, Humann creates a form of electronic rain through the noise, interference, and inconsistencies generated by the manipulation of the video signal. The technological process becomes the source of the disturbance. What is ordinarily understood as a transparent means of documenting a performance instead asserts itself as an active force, altering what can be seen and how the image is experienced.
The silence of the video further separates the work from its musical source. The viewer sees a vocalist performing a song but cannot hear her voice. This separation creates a tension between the visible gesture of singing and the absence of sound, making the viewer conscious of the difference between a performance and its recorded representation. The image promises an audible experience that the work deliberately withholds.
By combining analog recording methods with digital manipulation, Humann situates the work between two technological systems, each with its own characteristics and forms of instability. The resulting image is neither a straightforward document of the original performance nor a wholly abstract digital construction. It exists in the space between the two, where the traces of the source remain visible but are continually transformed by the recording process.
She Can’t Stand the Rain considers what happens when the technology used to preserve an image begins to interfere with it. The recording no longer functions simply as a record of a performance; its distortions become the performance’s defining visual condition. The rain is the noise of the medium itself, exposing the fragile boundary between the image we intend to capture and the image technology ultimately produces.
Richard Humann • She Can’t Stand The Rain, 2:03 minutes, Video (no sound), 2004
Richard Humann • She Can’t Stand The Rain, 2:03 minutes, Video (no sound), 2004
Richard Humann • She Can’t Stand The Rain, 2:03 minutes, Video (no sound), 2004
Photo credit: Richard Humann Studio