Montage Means Power. The Video-Essays of Johan Grimonprez

The method in which video artist Johan Grimonprez, who plays with images from the collective memory, stands out from the field is montage. Right from the beginning, both in the photo montages of John Heartfield and the montage techniques of Sergei Eisenstein, this modern technique has had political and ideological connotations. It obliges the viewer to revise and rethink the relationship between various images. In this sense montage provokes a radical questioning of hierarchy and a redefinition of power. Montage suggests new models of influence and authority. It creates a historical precedent in the interaction between avant-garde art and mass culture, between high and low, between the poetic and the prosaic. By means of the montage documentary images can take on a fictional character, but on the other hand, of course, fiction also has a documentary nature.