IMPAKT INVITES: ANNIKA LARSSON
The work of Swedish artist Annika Larsson focuses on patterns of human behaviour in contemporary culture. Her video installations represent slightly altered universes obeying autonomous rules. Actors are shown in close-up, in great detail. The shots are slow and carefully composed and framed. Images shot from different viewpoints succeed one another, but without ever offering a view of the whole. Larsson focuses on the body language and the eyes of the actors. Her work seems to be about the almost ritual quality of everyday actions. In the spectator, these videos arouse an oppressive feeling or even a form of claustrophobia, not only because of the close-ups but also the apparent strangeness of the environment in which the figures move about.
In her work Annika Larsson stages only men and deals with primarily male themes and its symbolic language, playing with concepts such as power, submission or violence, her work must not be simply understood as a mere criticism of these preestablished codes. Rather than developing an analytical discourse, she tries to submerge us into a peculiar atmosphere, in order to confront us with our own ambivalence towards the power of seduction and indisputable eroticism which emerges from her images. Because of her recent works Dolls and 3l33t IMPAKT invited her for an artist-talk. In this program Larsson will show 3l33t, excerpts from Dolls and a preview of her new video Blind . Also she will present some artists films and excerpts of feature films that inspired her and a selection of fetish related clips from her archive of private and amateur videos from the internet. Annika Larsson will be interviewed by Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen, curator at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
The programme includes a.o.:
3l33t – Annika Larsson
Sweden, 2007, video, 19:30 min
Dolls – Annika Larsson
Sweden, 2008, video, excerpts
Blind (work in progress) – Annika Larsson
Sweden, 2009, video