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First
person recordings. The work of Gitte Villesen.
by Leire Vergara
In recent years, we can have observed a new incursion of the "personal"
within the practice of some artists that work in a documentary mode
to capture un-controlled snatches of what we call "reality".
In such a works, we acknowledge how individual subjectivity has
started to add complexity on the economy of representation. The
inner voice of the "I", expressed in the first person
in front of the camera, causes the eye to shift, while at the same
time advances a new political situation. The narration of these
vital experiences, passions, daily habits, emotions and the desire
for change challenges any attempt to devise an identity as a totalised
entity. The contingency of the "personal" in its own unveiling
thus directly becomes political. Chantal Mouffe sees passion and
hope as the driving forces behind a possible change in the social
imaginarium. These emotions are grounded on the achievement of a
state of emancipation and liberation which is primarily individual
but can also become collective. For Mouffe, "passion is a formula
we can use to abandon rationality when it comes to understanding
subjectivity, but it can also be a means of transcending the established
social order" (1). Following these ideas, we should view passion,
emotion and the individual inner voice as a new way of understanding
the relationship between the subject and reality. The work of Gitte
Villesen shows us how this is possible when her recordings open
up a reflection on the portrait as an exercise in subjectivity.
Her films ultimately set up personal expression as an act of criticality
towards the economy of values that regulate our society.
Gitte Villesen began making videos with people from her milieu,
basing her work on the logic of capturing these people's day-to-day
activity through their private hobbies and interests. She made various
pieces with Willy, a neighbour of hers in Jutland, fascinated as
she was by the way he organised his life around his larger-than-life
passions. Willy collected over 600 different cars, although he never
actually owned more than one at a time. This fascination prevented
him from saving money and leading a "normal" life like
his neighbours. In "Willy as DJ", Gitte invites us to
share another of Willy's passions: music. Here he plays some of
his favourite tracks in his living-room. In a situation in which
there is an unusual level of participation between the recorded
situation and the spectator, Willy openly shares the personal memories
he relates to each song, we as viewers can only hold on to the observation
of a daily activity being the trigger of emotion.
Villesen's videos always give a strange feeling of interaction,
based on certain invitation to the spectator to take part in the
action. Primarily, this is due to the format of the subjective documentary
itself as a technique for rapprochement. But above all, the peculiar
way in which the artist herself interacts with the image (we hear
her voice behind the camera and she even comes into shot when necessary)
frames the situation as open to chance. The artist has mentioned
in more than one occasion, that her interest lies on the line between
art and documentary, fiction and reality to be blurred (2). All
the details of how she organises a shooting come to highlight this
idea of fluid re-construction. Thus, it is important for her to
have confidence with some of the subjects that will participate
in the film, as much as opening the situation to un-controlled moments.
The contrast drawn between reality and personal ideals comes to
be an interesting repetition in her work. As a result, her videos
always involve individual projects whether or not they actually
come to anything in the end. For Villesen, this duality between
project and reality shows us the economic, cultural and gender conditions
with which the individual has to negotiate on a day-to-day basis.
She argues that "this hostility highlights a complex set of
rules, forming an ethic which determines how one should speak of
difference, what subjects represent this difference and who is authorised
to talk about them..." (3). In "Two Movies by Jessie",
the artist worked with a writer and friend, Lars Eric Frank. The
result is a video-portrait of Jessie, a transsexual from the province
of Herning in Denmark, made during a short car journey to the coast.
The first part of the recording happens inside a car, stopped on
the road, as in an in-between nowhere. There, Jessie simply tells
to the camera an idea of hers for making a film. Later in the twilight
at the beach in the north coast of Denmark, she improvises the structure
for a new film that she would record in that same setting. The really
important thing here is not necessarily whether Jessie actually
gets to put these ideas into practice but the force and emotion
with which she narrates them. She already put her personal project
into practise when she decided to resort to surgery in order to
live the sexuality she feels. Today her limitations are perhaps
set by the rejection of a small community, which cannot understand
how hope brings social change forward.
In "The Building - The Bikeshop - Andy's Furniture", this
reflection on the production of social values is widened to cover
the art sphere. In spring 2000 Villesen made a series of recordings
of some of the different activities being performed in an old warehouse
in southern Chicago This is a place with a direct link to the work
of the American artist Dan Peterman. Peterman's work is based on
the idea of recycling as a process for questioning not only the
value of material resources but of the economy of values which evaluate
the art object and consequently control the art system itself. This
building is located on one side of the University of Chicago and
operates as a self-managed site, run by people from the local area.
When Dan Peterman was a student, the building housed a recycling
centre and he worked here in exchange for a place to use as a studio;
years later, he decided to buy it together with an adjoining plot
of land. Since then, it has hosted a number of different activities,
such as the publication of a magazine, bicycle-recycling, a residency
programme, etc. Gitte Villesen in a three-channel projection introduces
the personal relations generated from the daily act of running this
centre. She includes direct interviews with the people who everyday
visit and work here. The recordings are accompanied by a diagram
in a fold-out which introduces the name of the interviewed and his/her
work/activity. In a natural way, the recordings offer an indirect
image of the suburbs of Chicago, where urban planning momentarily
is left out to the self-management of an ad hoc community. But over
all it reveals once again how passion can produce a new social momentum.
1) "Hope, Passion and The New World Order", Mary Zournazi
in coversation with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, Sydney, Septembre
2000. First read in UKS Forum, Issue 1, Middle Class, Edited by
Gardar Eide Einarsson & Matias Faldbakken, May 2003.
2) As in "What's the difference?" A round table discussion
with Jörg Heiser, Jan Verwoert, Yael Bartana, Annika Eriksson,
Anri Sala and Gitte Villesen, Frieze no. 84.
3) In conversation with the artist, February 2004.
Originally printed in Zehar Magazine # 52
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