Directing

Petra Cortright

United States

Petra Cortright (born 1986) is an American artist working in video, painting, and digital media. She is well known for her video works presented on YouTube and in gallery environments. Her videos playfully explore formal properties of video software and the representation of physical bodies in digital spaces.

Acting credits

American auteur David Lynch opens up about the magic of the cinema in this new profile from Stella McCartney. Created by Lynch's son Austin Lynch and fine artist Case Simmons, the creative duo behind Los Angles-based studio Tête-à-Tête, their film offers us a rare insight into Lynch behind the lens, teaching us about his theory of film as well as his lifelong pursuit of transcendental meditation.

Curtains Up

2018

No synopsis available yet.

banksi unbrush ponitaeyel

2015

No synopsis available yet.

BRIDAL SHOWER

2013

No synopsis available yet.

DRK PARA

2013

Behind the camera

FUK YOUtube :P

puparazzi

2009

Collaboration with Stella McCartney.

color_blocks

2016

No synopsis available yet.

banksi unbrush ponitaeyel

2015

No synopsis available yet.

BRIDAL SHOWER

2013

FUK YOUtube:P:P

treasure_pool_party

2010

No synopsis available yet.

DRK PARA

2013

FUK YOUtube :P

trolly_xplosion.mp4

2010

FUK YOUTube:P

cats spirt spsit spit

2008

FUK YOUtube :P

wau browz

2008

2.0

Originally published on YouTube in 2007, Petra Cortright's VVEBCAM highlights the conditions of watching video online. Her passive surveillance of her videoscreen is mirrored by the viewer's own experience at that very moment, who is necessarily also consuming online content as they watch the work. Cortright complicates the dynamic of disengaged onlooking, however, by inserting a collection of animations that flash across the video. Default effects taken from the $20 webcam she used to record the work, running the gamut from cats to lightning bolts, literally animate the otherwise nonactive scene. Her passive stare mixed with these flashing images lend the video a hypnotic quality, further accentuated by the background music, Ceephax's "Summer Frosby," playing in Cortright's iTunes as she filme [Rhizome].