God Moves on the Water

In a mischievous media remix, Erik Bünger cross-wires vastly disparate cultural responses to the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, jamming the smooth road by which history becomes popular myth. The music video for Céline Dion’s chartbuster My Heart Will Go On (1997) is manipulated and scored to Blind Willie Johnson’s gospel song God Moves on the Water (1929). Instead of an ode to eternal love, Dion now sings praise of God’s implacable wrath.

– Srikanth Srinivasan