Filmform (est. 1950) is dedicated to preservation, promotion and worldwide distribution of experimental film and video art. Constantly expanding, the distribution catalogue spans from 1924 to the present, including works by Sweden’s most prominent artists and filmmakers, available to rent for public screenings and exhibitions as well as for educational purposes.
Ann-Sofi Sidén and Tony Gerber’s film begins with a nightmare. Ruth Fielding, a retired New York psychiatrist, wakes from her night sleep, reaches for a microphone and records the film’s opening monologue: she dreamed she was a new borne calf. In the morning she pulls with a dog leash a visitor from underneath her bed – a female creature who is from head to toe covered with mud, moves on all fours and does not speak. She calls her QM.
The film touches upon timeless issues concerning the self, on questions about belonging and differentiation, about happiness and the place of the individual in the world. This happens in a pseudo-scientific and awkward motherly experiments which Dr. Fielding carries out on her subject: QM. The incessantly failing attempts to identify this mysterious monster-like being reflect the search for the self and also the desires of a lonely woman in a touching and at times tragicomic way.
Born in 1962, lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.
Ann-Sofi Sidén long been recognized as a leading figure on the international art scene. In the last few years there have been major exhibitions of her work at Hayward Gallery in London, at Musée d’Art Moderna de la Ville de Paris and at the Secession in Vienna. The new exhibition at Moderna Museet includes several of her most important works and represents the largest presentation of her art to date.
Dealing with such issues as vulnerability, control, violence and surveillance, Ann-Sofi Sidén unravels some of the threads of the human psyche’s history. Her method is a suggestive mixture of journalism, feature film and scientific research that takes form in sculptural installations or in spatial video works. The dominant feeling is often one of being caught in a system – political, economic or social – or of realizing that one is somewhere in between systems.
