If I Were You—Las Vegas, New York, Blackpool is a video referencing Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) in three chapters about Robert De Niro impersonators living in three uncannily related cities: Blackpool (a Las Vegas look-alike); Las Vegas (with a casino replicating Manhattan's skyline); New York (Taxi Driver's original locations). The video loops endlessly—ending with Blackpool, restarting in Las Vegas—in perpetual repetition of copies. The iconic "Are you talkin' to me?" mirror monologue becomes motif for duplication and identification with the Other. Identities overlap: Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro, the three impersonators.
The three video fragments differ markedly in style and footage:
Las Vegas: Resembles fiction film, accompanied by original Taxi Driver soundtrack. Script texts appear as voice-over read by a Robert De Niro impersonator and enigmatic woman who also appear onscreen.
New York: Documentary-style focusing on uncanny doppelgänger aspects—the impersonator accused of real-life De Niro impersonation, disturbingly identifying with the actor while haunting original Taxi Driver sets.
Blackpool: Entirely found footage—low-quality VHS ads from the impersonator plus scenes from a Blackpool Illuminations Festival documentary.
Speaking of the “double” and the “doppelgänger” it is important to emphasize the complex and ambiguous terminology used to describe Pohle’s theoretical approach. At first glance, doppelgänger, lookalike, impersonator, double, persona, etc., are indeed semantically similar expressions, but by no means synonyms. In English the German loanword “doppelgänger” has connotations of the uncanny, in the Freudian sense, while the expression “double” can hardly be stripped of its cinematographic past. One might add the French “sosie” to this illustrious word family, which takes us back to the tragicomedy, Amphitryon by Plautus. In Sascha Pohle’s work we find all of these aspects in an astonishing interplay – a pictorial inquiry into identity and authenticity, appropriation and imitation.
excerpt of Sascha Pohle: Self-reflexive Aesthetics of Doubling, text by Gerald Bär
For further readings Self-Reflexive Aesthetics on Doubling by Gerald Bär
video stills
video stills
ascha Pohle, 2006/07, If I were you - Las Vegas New York Blackpool, video still
ascha Pohle, 2006/07, If I were you - Las Vegas New York Blackpool, video still
