A Blank Slate
2014 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
Sara Eliassen
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.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
He Xiangyu
2019He Xiangyu’s Terminal 3 presents excerpts from the lives of young African acrobats attending the Hebei Wuqiao Acrobatic Arts School in China...
© » KADIST
Yosuke Takeda
2014Yosuke Takeda gives the viewer brightly colored views, each of which he has searched out and patiently waited for...
© » KQED
How the Remixed American ‘Cowboy’ Became the Breakout Star of 2023 | KQED Skip to Nav Skip to Main Skip to Footer NPR How the Remixed American ‘Cowboy’ Became the Breakout Star of 2023 Brittany Luse Dec 13 Save Article Save Article Failed to save article Please try again Facebook Share-FB Twitter Share-Twitter Email Share-Email Copy Link Copy Link Beyoncé donned a cowboy hat for the limited edition cover of ‘Renaissance.’ (Parkwood Entertainment/ Columbia Records) When it came to some of the most urgent and enduring pop culture of 2023, the cowboy was center stage...
© » KADIST
Curtis Talwst Santiago
2017Curtis Talwst Santiago has been creating intimate and performative environments within these small spaces for several years; the artist used to carry them around to show visitors one on one, opening up a scene in the space of his hand...
© » KADIST
Corey McCorkle
2016Corey McCorkle’s 2016 installation Pendulum is developed around the Cavendish family and their role in importing bananas to Europe...
© » KADIST
Rachel Rose
2013In 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...
© » KADIST
Meschac Gaba
2010The headdresses, woven from artificial hair braids, symbolize historical icons including Martin Luther King, Kwame Nkrumah, Fela Kuti and King Guézo of Dahomey...
© » KADIST
Du Zhenjun
2010The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
© » DAZED DIGITAL
The best East Asian films of 2023 | Dazed â¬…ï¸ Left Arrow *ï¸âƒ£ Asterisk â Star Option Sliders âœ‰ï¸ Mail Exit Film & TV Dazed Review 2023 From Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s long-awaited Evil Does Not Exist, to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ‘absolute masterpiece’ Monster 12 December 2023 Text James Balmont The year 2023, now coming to a bitter end, was jam-packed with all kinds of zeitgeist-piercing movies...
© » KADIST
Gaëlle Choisne
2015Entre Chien et Loup is an installation incorporating a variety of media: rubber, discs, feathers and confetti that the artist weaves, sews and glues together...
© » KADIST
Nicoline van Harskamp
2008The work is a speech composed of excerpts from autobiographies of well-known political characters...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Migrant Ecologies Project: A Grain of Wheat Inside a Salt Water Crocodile | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Grain of Wheat July 8, 2019 A biscuit tin formerly containing Mermaid Brand Cream Crackers with wheat designs on the outside was chosen as the box to house the wheat as well as test tubes of salt, needles and Singapore’s very own NEWater – all for the wheat’s ritual protection...