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Thank you for coming. In this show I am taking part with a video work, "Driven." It's a collaboration
with another Swedish artist Monika Larsen Dennis, there. This is a short presentation.
It starts here.
Yeah, is a short documentation screening, at P.S.1, 2001.
This piece "Driven" is done with Monika. We met at Royal College of Art in Stockholm '97
and we have done several works together. Including performances, public installations, text based
works and video.
This is a still from the video. This piece is about relationship. Gender roles. Trust,
and mistrust, and power. And the passion. And also the censor list in taking notice
of small details.
Here you see "Driven" at the P.S.1. I especially like when we show "Driven" as a large scale
presentation. To see the contrast to the piece which is so private and intimate.
Something happened. It doesn't come up. I am pressing this down here.
OK. You have to press harder.
This is another outdoor public screening, and this is in the center of Stockholm. This
is the biggest square and it's done during... when the city was the center capital of Europe.
Here you see "Driven" projected onto a castle. It's at the Wanås Foundation in Sweden.
Wanås Foundation is a sculpture park. Here you see another work we have done together.
It started out as another public instillation, at the airport in Stockholm. The title is
"Around and around."
And these sentences were printed onto the luggage carousel. So when you were standing
there looking for your luggage. You got theses sentences. And it's about failing to communicate
in a relationship, and the limits of language.
We have done this piece into a post card. Especially for this show. So you're welcome
to get one when you step out from this talk.
I also want to show you more of my own work. I do videos and large scale photographs. So
this photo is one by four meters. My work is focusing on masculinity, and the contemporary
man. It's about playing roles as a woman and as a man. It's also about the expectations
of being a grown up.
"Somewhere Else" is both a photograph and a video work. It's also about the *** gaze.
I am a woman looking at these men, and I'm also directing them. What to do. In the video,
I ask them to open and close their legs in a special rhythm. So it becomes like a dance.
A choreographed dance.
I used different symbols of power. Like architecture. And in this case nature. But, also beauty
itself. This picture was shot in San Francisco at Stinson Beach. The piece is about the fear
and the freedom of losing control. To be in something larger than yourself.
And in this case it's very hard to control the nature. My works are stories about powerful, vulnerable,
and insecure individuals.
Her you see the dot com people. The dot com professionals before the crash in 2001. It's
shot in Stockholm.
I always use real people in my work. If I need a businessman, I go out in the street
and look for a businessman and ask them to take part, and then I direct them. So I transform
reality with just one snap. One day they have control - and in this case, I put this man
into the water - and they are in a surrounding that is unfamiliar, and they have to lose
control.
This is a video work. Here I use a well known man for the first time. This piece was done
before 9/11. I think that's important; I wouldn't like to do it after that. I had an opening
in New York City, the seventh of September 2001, which was a very intense and strange
situation.
The first time, people were really laughing about the President, and then this horrible
thing happened, and the gallery had to close. This piece really got a different context,
so it was difficult for even the gallery to know if it was appropriate to show it.
But he showed it again, and he opened after three days. And the reaction was complete
silence. I think this is my most shown work. I've shown this work constantly since then,
and it's always changing with the current politics.
I took the material from CNN and made a news story. It's all the silent pauses when he's
not talking. So he's showing not a powerful man, but the other sides. He shows off insecurity
and the confusion of person that's afraid, and the little boy that's wants to get applause,
and a boy that wants to be loved by his father.
Here's another work, maybe a familiar power situation. I don't know. We'll see. This photograph
belongs to an ongoing series that started in 2003. So far, it consists of 11 photographs,
and I'm also doing a video work. Here I show people as still lifes, as nature modeled objects.
It's an equal objectification between men and women and objects. And it's also about
life and death.
I wanted the man to have bare feet. So you can see this living skin compared to the books
that have leather fabric, so there's this contrast in the piece. It's about being surrounded
by something that you cannot control, or you can control your small area. The books are
shaped after his body in the closest area, so you can influence your nearby area.
These works are all very large-scale photographs. I like the physicality of approaching a photograph
in a more physical way. This man is like the story about "The Princess and the Pea," but
it's layers of our time that he has to relate to. For me, it's contemporary archaeology.
I feel that this structure is history, and you soon won't see any cars anymore, and we
will feel that this was a very long time ago.
This photograph is my latest project. It's both a series of four photographs and a video
with three channels. It's about security and of being enclosed and protected, but also
the opposite of being isolated and not seeing the bigger picture. It's like the journalists
in the war; they were called "Embedded journalists/" They went there to get a better picture of
the war, but they were so embedded it was hard to get it. So this is both in your private
life and in a bigger picture.
I also think about the world and nature at large, like the icebergs melting in Antarctica.
In the video, I'm asking them to slowly move out of the bed. So it's like a waterfall.
They move very slowly, so they almost move like insects or creatures that you don't know.
It also feels very abstract. So they're going away. I actually don't know where they're
going. I'm curious to see where the men in my works are going.
I feel like the people in my pictures, they're not portraits of these people really. They
are more distant, and they are replaceable. It's more a constant flow of humans. This
is what I have to say. And if you have any questions, you're welcome to ask them.
Thank you so much, Maria.
Thank you.