The Mad Masters records acts from a Las Vegas celebrity impersonator convention. Professionals and aspiring imitators raise questions: How deeply does imitation achieve identification? How do media images create desires to become other selves? The work examines imitation as popular culture's revenant, probing power between celebrity, cinema, and archaic ritual.
Who are the mad masters—the possessed or embodied?
Title references Rouch's Les Maîtres fous (1955): Hauka sect trances possessed by colonial spirits (governor, engineer, doctor's wife). Draws on Rouch's "cine-trance"—camera-evoked possession merging filmmaker and subjects.
For further readings Self-Reflexive Aesthetics on Doubling by Gerald Bär
video still, The Mad Masters, Sascha Pohle
"All is open to participate." A ceremony where participants become possessed, united in one gaze"
Opening sentence of the video
video stills, The Mad Masters
Film stills, Les maîtres fous, Jean Rouch, 1955
