Johanna

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, please applaude The Dead Weather’.

While Mosshart, White and their colleagues leave the stage under the applause of the audience, the robot-crane camera flies to the lounge part of the set, where Johanna, sitting on her throne-like armchair, is as carefully lit as the band, in a quite similar way, with a subtly balanced mix of white, blue and ultraviolet. She wears light-reactive body make-up that makes her skin glow almost imperceptibly, her lips and nipples as pale as her skin, making her look like a living statue. A hidden tubular fan directed to her face slightly accentuates the movement of her long hair, and her voice is lightly pitched down, compressed, equalized and phased. It is as if she belongs to a faintly shifted dimension, where gravity, time and light are somehow different, and the fact that this is obviously artificial and the result of elaborated special effects seems to even increase its impact.

The program’s host seems very happy with himself, he obviously has an ace up his sleeve: ‘Johanna, I would like to show you something my crew shot yesterday evening in a Berlin cabaret... They have this show that claims to be a training program to survive what they call the inevitable collapse of the capitalist society’ – he grins ironically – ‘they are probably very happy that we advertise for them tonight because I doubt that anybody else pays attention to this kind of artsy-fartsy underground show...’ 
The camera frames Johanna’s face in close-up to catch her reaction but the director notices immediately how she de-focuses her eyes in a way that conveys a feeling of tremendous boredom, even though her face stays impassive. They have to keep this frame at least five more seconds or they’ll break the rhythm, but he whispers in the host’s ear-flap to cut the smart-ass comments and get to the point.

‘Or maybe they will be the next sensation, because for sure they caught the spirit of the time, as you will see right away. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the pleasure to introduce you to the Hardcore Kunst Lumpenkabarett Dancing on Ashes!’

On the screen behind them, the logo of the show decomposes in accelerating squares, colliding with each other and vanishing in pixel explosions, revealing what seems to be a crouching bear, agitated with sudden quakes. A hand loaded with shining rings emerges from the creature, pulls what appears to be a heavy fur-coat to expose bare buttocks on top of high-heel boots. The soundtrack mixes drum-rolls, laughs and a high-pitched shriek that is probably guitar feedback. At the other end of the fur-coat a head rises, wearing a long blond wig and a latex mask bearing the features of Johanna. The fake Johanna crosses the stage ringed with black curtains on all four, growling like a wolf, while a recorded voice starts to tell the life of the Death Angel of Consumerism.