Brain and body
The exhibition marks the first presentation of Emily Wardill’s works in Denmark. Infused with a keen awareness of tradition and an equally strong urge to experiment, Wardill has established herself as one of the great innovators within video art. Her works point to alternative and frequently startling potentials for the medium of film and video, and the new exhibition, created especially for the x-rummet, reflects on how the brain and the body are linked.
Between performance and film
According to Emily Wardill the new film work for x-rummet occupies a position somewhere between a thriller and a poem. Behind the colourful plot, which includes Internet dating, deceit, and possible espionage, Wardill’s work explores how consciousness, sensuousness, and physical existence operate in a kind of mutual feedback relationship. Taking its starting point in the relationships between the neurologist Eitienne, his students and patients, and the mysterious woman Slalem, the film looks at possible connections between bodily and emotional dysfunctions.
Wardill created the film in workshops conducted with actors at the Lilith Performance Studio in Malmö, Sweden. The artist and actors have worked in a field where film and performance meet and merge in a mutual exchange. Such crossover formats are typical of Wardill, who primarily works with film and video and screens her works in carefully staged spaces. She employs formal devices and modes of expression from a range of existing film genres such as documentary film, televised theatre, and melodrama. Wardill regards film - the act of making and of watching film - as a bodily experience. Or, perhaps more accurately, as a situation that automatically activates a bodily awareness. The film’s oscillation between live performance and edited footage is intended to activate the spectator’s awareness of their own body through their involvement in another’s story.
