Outer and Inner Space (1966)

Outer and Inner Space is a 16mm film of Edie Sedgwick sitting in front of a television monitor on which is playing a prerecorded videotape of herself. On the videotape, Edie is positioned on the left side of the frame, facing right; she is talking to an unseen person off-screen to our right.

Outer and Inner Space is a groundbreaking multimedia document. Edie Sedgwick appears to have a conversation with herself. Time is compressed into the moment and we read a face in four parts which seems to be communicating with itself.

"As spectacularly beautiful as it is a fascinating spectacle, Warhol’s spatially dynamic and dramatically lit film-and-video portrait of Sedgwick, Outer and Inner Space, 1965, is perhaps his most brilliant articulation of the schism between private self and public image, as well as a further exploration of the serial imagery in his paintings. Shot during the summer of 1965, publicly screened in 1966, and recently rescued from oblivion, this was his first double-screen film—The Chelsea Girls would follow in September 1966—and his initial foray into video. Given the chance by Norelco to experiment with a prototype home-video recorder, Warhol used the camera to create a half-hour portrait of Sedgwick (as well as other Factory denizens). He then shot two thirty-three-minute 16 mm reels of the actress sitting in front of a television playing her videotaped image. In the final product, the two reels are shown side by side." ArtForum