I had no other Choice than to Jump from one Pile to the Other, as there was Nothing in between
Video, 2012
The Gambian musician Amadou Sarr, with whom I have cooperated before tells an old tale while playing on his Molo - a traditional instument. In the tale the Frock and Cockroach are competion on who are oldeste. Gitte Villesen has traveled several times to Gambia since 2008. The point of departure for these works is the encounter with the Gambian musician Amadou Sarr, with whom Villesen has entered into a long-term cooperation that introduces her to the social texture of his culture as well as the magical practices of Juju. In the course of her projects, Villesen expands this cooperation, for example by recording conversations with three women related to Sarr, Yenden Joff, Mariama Corr and Mariama Senghor, or by asking Mariama Senghor to make the curtains for her installations. On the whole, Villesen’s works follow an ethics of documenting, which can be succinctly described with the words of the author Ursula LeGuin: “The story is not all mine, nor told by me alone.”
Downshifting? Trees, trees, trees.
Artist's Bio:
Gitte Villesen’s documentary videos and installations can be understood as portraits in the broadest sense: they explore the form in which individuals or social groups give shape to their lives within the framework of their cultural possibilities. However, their protagonists appear neither as heroic subjects nor as victims of circumstance. Instead, Villesen illuminates how subjects and identities are constituted in the everyday micro-politics of gestures, habits and rituals in the charged relationship between norm and deviation. At the same time, she carefully avoids social generalizations by situating the practice of documenting itself as exchange and encounter – as a specific form of social interaction, in which the forms of representation always become the subject of negotiation as well.