Sara Eliassen’s video work A Blank Slate (2014) employs cinematic effect to investigate the relationships between subjectivity, gaze, and memory. Set in a sleepy and unidentified coastal town, the film begins as the protagonist unexpectedly finds herself inside a hotel room in a lucid state. Attempting to grasp her surroundings, she falls into a deeper metaphysical reality where her memories blur with her awareness of her surroundings until she finds herself again alone in a dream-like state. As she leaves her room, she walks through a nighttime boardwalk of carnival games and boarded-up shops, weaving through the thin crowd of revelers with an over determined gait. The camera follows her in reverse shot, trying to keep pace with her speeding and erratic pace. Suddenly, she arrives at a Ferris wheel and gets into a car; the ride begins, and the camera focuses on her in close-up as she looks off into the distance, her expression at once detached and intensely aware. In a scene borrowed from Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s 2000 novel Sputnik Sweetheart , the woman sees herself having sex with a man through a distant window of her own hotel room. Scenes of female characters from film history are interspersed between these moments of surreal dissonance, creating a heightened sense of temporal disjunction. These disjointed shifts of perspective and narrative represents a decisive attempt to disrupt what theorist Laura Mullvey describes as the “male gaze” inherent to visual culture, and in these moments of fragmentation, A Blank Slate offers a compelling meditation on how media-based cultures shape how we define our subjectivities and, by extension, ourselves.
Sara Eliassen is a conceptual filmmaker working in video, drawing, installation, and public practice. Her films often question the notion of self and that of the audience’s gaze, as typically positioned in society. She uproots expectations of narrative structures in cinema, often using iconic cinematic moments as departure points for her investigations of the viewer-character dynamics and of collective memory in film. Eliassen’s work also involves projects in public space: the activist anti-ad project Not Worth It; making false TV-ads interfering with Norwegian public and commercial TV-channels. Eliassen holds an MFA in experimental filmmaking from San Francisco Art Institute and was a studio fellow at The Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in 2011. Her films Still Birds and A Blank Slate have played extensively at international film festivals, amongst them Venice Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam and Sundance.
He Xiangyu’s Terminal 3 presents excerpts from the lives of young African acrobats attending the Hebei Wuqiao Acrobatic Arts School in China...
Notebook 10 , l ‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras) series by Kelly Sinnapah Mary is a sequel to an earlier series by the artist titled Cahier d’un non retour au pays natal (2015)...
Central Station, Alignment, and Argument are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds...
The work is a speech composed of excerpts from autobiographies of well-known political characters...
Corey McCorkle’s 2016 installation Pendulum is developed around the Cavendish family and their role in importing bananas to Europe...
Prabhakar Pachpute was born in 1986 and raised in Chandrapur (Maharashtra), India, a place known as ‘The City of Black Gold’, where his family has worked for three generations in one of the oldest mines in the country...
Yosuke Takeda gives the viewer brightly colored views, each of which he has searched out and patiently waited for...
Archaeologists Find Evidence of Hallucinogenic Drug in Ancient Rome Skip to content A bust of Emperor Trajan surrounded by black henbane seends and flowers and a femur discovered by archaeologists (edit Valentina Di Liscia/ Hyperallergic ) Two new archaeological finds suggest Roman subjects at the northern edge of the ancient empire used a hallucinogenic and poisonous plant called black henbane, the effects of which were described by Greek philosopher Plutarch as “not so properly called drunkenness” but rather “alienation of mind or madness.” Dutch zooarchaeologists Maaike Groot and Martijn van Haasteren and archaeobotanist Laura I...
Artist Rejected from Venice Biennale Polish Pavilion Says He was Censored | Art & Object Skip to main content Subscribe to our free e-letter! Webform Your Email Address Role Art Collector/Enthusiast Artist Art World Professional Academic Country USA Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua & Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Ascension Island Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia & Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory British Virgin Islands Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Canary Islands Cape Verde Caribbean Netherlands Cayman Islands Central African Republic Ceuta & Melilla Chad Chile China Christmas Island Clipperton Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo - Brazzaville Congo - Kinshasa Cook Islands Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Curaçao Cyprus Czechia Côte d’Ivoire Denmark Diego Garcia Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Falkland Islands Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard & McDonald Islands Honduras Hong Kong SAR China Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao SAR China Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar (Burma) Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands North Korea North Macedonia Norway Oman Outlying Oceania Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territories Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Islands Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Réunion Samoa San Marino Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Sint Maarten Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka St...
“Efficiency & Abyss 1” is part of a series of photographs of stacked chairs in an auditorium...
Entre Chien et Loup is an installation incorporating a variety of media: rubber, discs, feathers and confetti that the artist weaves, sews and glues together...
This photograph is part of the series titled “Iris Tingitana project” (2007) focusing on the disappearance of the iris...
In the 2013 video work, Sitting Feeding Sleeping , Rose combines footage taken of zoo animals living in captivity with screen images that flicker and flash before us...
For the two-channel work Asking the Repentistas – Peneira & Sonhador – to remix my octopus works Shimabuku asked two Brazilian street singers to compose a ballad about his previous works with octopi (in which he created traditional Japanese ceramic vessels to catch octopi, with a fisherman who took him on his boat to test them out as we can see on one of the channel)...