KAJA LEIJON PORTFOLIO 2016

Transcription

1 KAJA LEIJON PORTFOLIO 2016

2 ARTISTIC PRACTICE My work is dwelling on the mechanisms of imagery; photographs archived as memories in our consciousness; imagery constructed by our imagination and thus how these predominates how we perceive our surroundings, and our experience of reality;basically how we think in pictures, why exactly that image grows out of a specific situation. Preconceived projections dominates the way we see and interpret the world. The medium of film has a deep effect on our attitudes and how we deal with reality, which is the subject I want to dwell on in my production.

3 FILM

4 WASTELAND (10 min film, HD, 2012) Wasteland shows four characters in four different contexts at different times, connected only by the similarity of their situation. In the universe of cinema a woman that acts on her own will momentarily be connected to prosecution and danger. She is under threat on default. This attitude in fiction has a real effect on the mental atmosphere of the female sex. Fiction blends with reality. Does our imagination generate this fear or are the surroundings in themselves threatening? Does horror stem from darkness or is the idea of of darkness the real concern? Link: password: wasteland789

5 RESONANCES (10 min, 4K transferred to 35 mm film, 5.1 sr, 2010) The main character in the movie Resonances is a young woman in her early twenties. The scenario unfolds on a warm summer day in the Norwegian woods. The character is gathering sounds on her recorder, and the sound she hears is transferred to the audience as she hears it. She is attentive and focused in her own world, and is using her body active, which the audience experiences through her body language and facial expressions. Somehow something drags her out of this perceptive state of mind. The character is intensely involved in what she listens to and this isolates her. Some sounds are amplified, and she loses track on the holistic state of her surroundings. This way of experiencing the world, filtered and fragmented makes the character seem like a focused and responsible individual, but after a while this scenario turns negative. Gradually the microphone and headset makes her disoriented and unsafe. She becomes paranoid, not sure if what she hears is real or not, more than anything because very often she can t see what she hears. This stimulates her imagination and creates mirages. This makes reality relative to her. Our understanding of matter is never pure. We can not, and will never be able to see the world with naked eyes. Our interpretation of the world and reality is always affected by the situation we are in, by accident or by effort. Link: password: 12345

6 AT THE SAME TIME (10 min, 2-screen video installation, HD, 2014) At the same time is a project where the term mimesis, the cinematic space and collective memory is dissected. The newspaper is a starting point, and triggers a connection between media and fiction. In the motion picture Days and Nights by Satyaijt Ray one of the main characters sets fire to a newspaper, and this activated a stream of thought on how the newspaper as object is used as an authenticity tool in cinema, but also questions how we relate to the stories generated by the media as real or fiction based on how near or far away different events occur physically. The process has generated a specific interest for the place as a term, how a place is close to us or detached from us. I reduce the newspaper to a prop in this piece, thus relativizing its status as generator of meaning. The video installation consists of three parts. The first part is a dolly shot of an individual walking, the camera stalking her from behind, but in a non-threatening way. We see the character exclusively in close-up, her feet touching the soil, fabric changing shape because of movement, her neck and her hand carrying the newspaper. The images constantly shifts between these perspectives, but since the film is taken as a one-shot, the confusion of the shifts becomes continuos. Part two is a stable frame of the same newspaper discarded on the ground. The wind gives the object life. The newspaper is the cameras only concern, and for a long while nothing happens. Suddenly the newspaper catches fire without being fused. Part three is filmed at Cinécitta film studio outside Rome. The camera simply scanning the venue, giving the scene a feeling of both reality and unreality. This project has little emphasis on linear narration, which makes the soundscape essential. The sound shifts from a subjective to an objective universe. The soundscape starts with the woman and her newspaper, close sounds, the steps fading and returning, the fabric in movement as sound, the sound of the newspaper fluttering in the wind. This changes gradually, and the soundscape opens up. The sound of the city becomes more important and voices interrupt. The focus shifts from the characters viewpoint to a universal one. Link: password: 12345

7 PHOTOGRAPHY

8 THE REMINISCENT OBJECT (series of color and b/w photographs, 2014) The last year my main focus has been large format stills of the front pages of newspapers. The origin of this project is a reflection on how we relate to media and the priority of imagery in media, how they channelize these images, how certain images creates deep traces in our memory, while others lose their momentum fast and fades, because of irrelevance, because of no physical connection to the event they portray and even our inability to accept certain images as real. This very fast went from being a simplistic to a problematic method, since the images quite fast could only be a manifestation of the newspapers as objects. Through my residency at W17 (Oslo) new choices has forced themselves through. This has stimulated me to redo certain images of the newspapers themselves, but has also lead me to include other specific objects, and evaluate them with my camera in a serious way, since the isolation of the specific objects amplifies their semiotic abilities, but also their history. Somehow the objects becomes representation of something beyond what they can project as pure matter. Something is hidden inside and behind these objects, is it a roll of film in a case barely opened, or a stack of newspapers. The objects stops reflecting itself as object. It now represents its story, while other images, like a Chinese pack of cigarettes becomes more an object than ever through being photographed in this manner. It stops being a story and starts its function as a tale. Frankfurter Allgemeine, C-Print/contactsheet, 2014

9 Sandals, S-21 Genocide Museum, C-Print/contactsheet, 2014

10 Catalogue, Masques Katsinam, Des Indiens Hopis de L' Arizona, C-Print/contactsheet, 2014

11 Installation view, At the same Time, Skien Kunstforening, 2014 Installation view, The Reminiscent Object, W17 Kunstnernes Hus, 2014

12 ANOTHER WORLD (series of color and b/w photographs, 2015) Another World, C-print, 2015

13 Clouds, C-Print, 2015

14 Nude, C-Print, 2015

15 ANOTHER WORLD The creation of the sublime image is an onerous task, and very much connected to déjà vu. One recognizes something from deep within, from a dream, or a fragment of memory, a mood. This vague sensation inspires the execution. But where does the image occur? There is always an expectation, a mental image will always be generated, and this is the first image. Which image is the real one? If the first image is the authentic one, the final copy of the negative of that image is a faux. Disappointment is a crucial ingredient and essential factor in creating a true photograph. Aspiring to document a scenery truly and honestly will make the small effects of aberrations in the lens, post-production and the photographers faults, all too visible. The faults have no willing effects to hide behind. To be authentic in photography is necessarily to be a potential traitor to memory. The world through a camera will always be another world. The vital question is if that generated imaginary world is affected or effected by the artist that generates it. There is always a conflict between effect and affect, because affection is to see and accepting something as it truly is, while effect is simulating it into something implausible. The S curve in photography is the deus ex machina of photography. Contrast and sharpness can not save an image, but neither will abstraction. The truth of a photographic image rests in geometry, not in aesthetics, which makes balanced choices an act of authenticity. This again makes the feeding ground for the concept infertile, because the inaccuracy of memory is what generates a true image. Memories are dubious, dull and dove colored. Photography is as much about repeating memories as it concerns the act of preserving them. One is thus forced to mix the now with the then, and this concludes in a when. To the human being it s often surprising how the jolt of awe, when pressing the shutter, is washed out in a fizzle when facing the contact print. The wondrous image is often moments later vaguely remembered, if remembered at all. The true image is often unconscious, and truth has as many hues as it has distortions. The true image is found where fact and fiction meets, because the photograph as much as it always tries to be an axiom, always is a compromise of involuntary myth. One can not capture a moment. One can only give homage to it. The discussion of good or bad can not be applied to photography, but one has the responsibility to create a parallel world, a world which makes the crucial aspects of our world more visible. This process is as much about cutting away as it is about inclusion. When you expose the entire vista the fine points are obscured, and this is a method one can use to play hide and seek with the viewer; beehive turns into coolerbag, the falcon turns into a stain on the negative, the palm tree might be interpreted as a fountain. The camera is omnipresent in the creation of this world, but it s choices and technical strengths or weaknesses are eroded and cloaked. The creation of this other world is now a balanced cooperation between the world itself, the artist and the viewer. He or she is free to reject this field of vision. But in doing this he s not only rejecting the creator of the image, he s also rejecting the neutral altered world. Most of all he s rejecting himself. He s rejecting his ability to view, examine and identify with. If one wants to generate another world one has to meditate. The true photographer always is the one who recognizes himself as a medium between the world and the imagination. To photograph a group of clouds is to question if they can bee seen anew. The root signifies something, very obvious and worth a study, but we pass it mostly without second thoughts. The black and white image of the classic nude is a reproduction of that picture, but something else too. You just have to put your finger at it. Yes, you can capture movement without a significant blur. Photography (like the world itself) doesn't need to be reinvented. It has to be discovered again. The photograph didn't disappear in to the drain of neither post-modernism or post-production, only the idea of photography did. There are things in life that are eternally pure. One only needs to find, stare, sleep, dream, find again, stare again. We never capture anything, we release and give rise to what is hidden in the margins.

16 Installation view Another World, MELK Gallery, Oslo, 2015