Saskia Holmkvist

Saskia Holmkvist (Suède, * 1971)

Je trouve que cette artiste est très interessante pour le projet.
Vous pouvez consulter son site: www.saskiaholmkvist.com (textes et images)

Je pensais surtout aux performances : „Artist Talk“ et „Press Conference“
et aux vidéos: „Interview with Saskia Holmkvist“
„Role Control“ and „In Character“ (Ce travail, je l'ai vu à Francfort il y a peu de temps → Anais, ces vidéos m'ont fait penser à ton projet:
„In Character“ aborde l'entretien d'embauche et l'interrogatoire /
„Role Control“ aborde plutôt la thérapie, négotiation/débat politique )



Saskia H. de son travail:

„Over the past few years I have been engaged in an art practice that moves between video, performance and site specific projects–in an ongoing artistic investigation into the relations of the politics of the authentic and credible. In the process I explore the negotiation of undertaking roles in life and how stuctures within language affect the politics of these positions. My interest lies in what is behind the apparent dialogue or culture such as manipulations, strategies, missunderstandings, translations and more.
To this aim, I employ conceptual and methodological approaches borrowed from artistic and academic practices such as journalism, theater, documentary film and psychoanalytics. People from different categories of profession are invited to participate in the projects; such as job-recruiters, UN mediators, the police working with interrogation, psycho-therapists, media trainers, people doing voice over in documentary film, to establish a framework were a meeting leads to an exchange of knowledge or a conflict of interest that is later represented in the work. The purpose of these experimentations are to get closer to how language is used, be it verbal or in any other form as a tool to master a situation in communication. „



Artist Talk


Artist Talk is a preview talk in disguise.
A person claiming to be Saskia Holmkvist appears and tells us in a theoretic way what her work is about. A few minutes later the same person announces that she would like Saskia Holmkvist to step forward and perform this. This time the  ́real` Saskia Holmkvist comes in and states the exact same two first phrases as the first person did. The  ́fake`Saskia Holmkvist now appears to be a Pr-person and interupts Saskia while she is explaining the exhibition to ask the audience how things that were said came across. This intervention makes the audience take part in the performance and respond to the questions of the Pr-person. Then Saskia Holmkvist is asked over and again to explain or re-state what she has just said.


Press Conference


Press conference is a re-enactment of the press-release text of the exhibition. The performance act alters the roles between the spectator and the exhibition producer and comments on the power dynamics between curator-artist-viewer and the expected exchanges going on between them.
The performance is a rehearsal, memorization and learning process of the press release and treats levels of understanding the communication of an exhibition. To learn a text by heart is to know the exact words but in order to learn the lines the content of the words have to be understood, which in turn will help the process of learning. During the performance the expected roles of the situation itself are altered. Saskia Holmkvist giving the speech needs the audience who has the manuscript in their hands i.e. the press-release to help her perform the text.
The performance Press Conference was held at the opening night 18pm, at the exhibition “Last chance to see the show” at Point Ephemère in Paris curated by Christian Alandete.


In Character & Role Control

Saskia Holmkvist’s recent films In Character and Role Control, both from 2008, are complementary inasmuch as they reciprocally develop a narrative that explores ideas of credibility, social strategies.
The two works originate in four kinds of ‘conversation situations’ with diametrically opposite aims, dealing with interpersonal and political positions: the job interview, the interrogation, couple therapy and political arbitration. These situations where relationships are worked on and negotiated and which require strategies for productive dialogue and conflict management are woven together in Saskia Holmkvist’s work into an investigation of the factors that define and control power relations and how these relations can be negotiated.

In the films Saskia Holmkvist has made use of staged situations and actors who, in the course of the films, gradually swap positions and force the conversation over a boundary where the dialogue changes meaning and forces the viewer towards a new interpretation of the situation.


Interview with Saskia Holmkvist


When we see the title Interview with Saskia Holmkvist we expect to see an interview with the artist Saskia Holmkvist but few minutes into the film it is revield to us that the situation is another. Saskia Holmkvist has hired a media relations expert to train her to deliver a short statement about her work with apparent sincerity and authority. The short statement that Saskia Holmkvist repeats in their training describes her practice with direct reference to this process.
It’s about how we comprehend something as being honest and true, states Saskia Holmkvist. Over the eight minute film, Holmkvist is instructed in body language, posture, voice timbre, eye contact, in a process more associated with political careerism than artistic development. The interruptions, visible microphones, and self-conscious pauses make it clear that even the most stereotypically ‘authentic’ figure – the artist – is capable of, and possibly is always engaged in – a performance. However, the revelation of the performance is itself carefully constructed. Shot in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, from several angles using hand-held and fixed cameras, the film’s visual language of authenticity is itself a construction, a language created by media such as reality television. So, our supposed access to reality never quite resolves itself.