Filmform (est. 1950) is dedicated to preservation, promotion and worldwide distribution of experimental film and video art. Constantly expanding, the distribution catalogue spans from 1924 to the present, including works by Sweden’s most prominent artists and filmmakers, available to rent for public screenings and exhibitions as well as for educational purposes.
The video had the intention of being a work that shows the production of an action scene. Both the actors and the film team are visible on screen. The story is based on a representation of a rape. The work is about the situation during the production (the shooting) and the relationship between the director and the actors. The male actor experiences problems performing his roll as an abuser. An awkward situation between the director and the actor arises.
In his roll as an abuser, the man becomes a victim of the director’s mental violence. The scenes are repeated, over and over again, interrupted new take etc. The result/outcome shows the repetitions of the scenes.
Ironically the video, during the production, changed character and became something different than ‘planned’. That’s exactly the ‘stunt’ in my works. The director was supposed to rule during the production, but in the real situation, the power instead alternated between the actors. During the editing of this material I could discern that the staccato, fumbling and unprogressive action had the value of being rather strange and humorous.
Jannicke Låker (born in Norway) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Jannicke Låker is one of the very few Norwegian artists who have consistently worked with video and developed the media into a powerful tool, using low-tech video language as a starting point.
Artist statement: In my works I often use, together with humor, heavy subject matters as racism, sexual violation, power games between people etc, but common for all my videos is the intention to reveal the human behind the actions, often something intimate, private or banal -that’s the motive power behind the work. But as well as exposing the actors I also expose the director and her motive behind, and the actions in, the work. The videos is based on simple scripts with an exact physical setting that builds the frames which allows me to improvise during the production.
‘It is in the videos in which the artist herself is directly involved, either in front or behind the camera, that the expression is most powerful. Here, Låker shows a devil-may-care attitude, which has made her one of the most interesting and exciting Norwegian video artists’.
