ABSTRACT

Dancing alone while performing to others is a familiar spectacle on YouTube. Sam Sadler's dancing fits this template: it is a jerky copy of Psy's routine, in which the amateur simultaneously inhabits a cultural phenomenon, the medium of dance, and a space inside digital mediation. Harding's case is a good illustration of YouTube's economy of performance. Initially Harding did not go to Rwanda or Peru to learn the dances of local people; rather, to place his body in situ a little like a summiter's flag. Many of the characteristics of me dancing' apply just as well to me singing'. Harding gave a presentation at The Entertainment Gathering conference in Monterey, California, in 2008 claiming that the entire project was a pretense, and that he had performed all along in front of a blue screen with exotic locations composited behind him Hartley suggests that purposeless entertainment has nurtured demand for creative self-expression and communication among the young'.