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.
The opening scene in Cigar invites us into an air-conditioned office somewhere in the world. With all the delicate and smooth gestures of a connoisseur, a middle-aged man in a suit takes an expensive cigar out of a long, silver holder in a black leather case. Using the small guillotine of a cigar cutter, he carefully prepares it to be enjoyed. He gives it to his visitor and helps him light it. Their hands touch each other gently, the cigar is lit. With a nearly obscene concentrated enjoyment, the visitor smokes away in a sofa while the other man looks at him intensely. Despite the fact that the men in Annika Larsson’s works in many ways are caricatures of the typical Western male as a symbol of power, it would be wrong to say that she examines or critiques male power. It is more the peculiar erotic tension in apparently banal tasks that is important here. A man smokes a cigar while being watched by another one
/Sara Arrhenius, extract form the text ‘I wanna be your Dog’ first published in Tema Celeste 88, 2001.
Born in 1972 in Stockholm, Sweden. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Annika Larsson is a Swedish artist, working mainly with film, video, performance and installation. She is interested n incidental but meaningful gestures and rituals, in corporal-linguistic patterns of behavior that conceal hierarchical social power structures. Annika Larsson attended the Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm from1995-2000. Playing with concepts such as power, submission, and violence her work touches upon the almost ritual quality of everyday actions.
Through iteration Larsson produces a form of psychological slow motion, where the spectator is lulled into a soporific state in which time is clearly flowing but also standing still.Her works have been widely shown internationally, at institutions including Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; Fundacion la Caixa, Barcelona; Le Magasin, Grenoble; Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nürnberg; ICA-Institute of Contemporary Art, London; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; S.M.A.K., Gent and Musac, Lyon. She has participated in biennials such as 49th Venice Biennial, 8th Istanbul Biennial and 6th Shanghai Biennial among others.
