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.
On the screen an insect is seen. It keeps flying seemingly tireless on its path. At the same time we hear three stories, based on reality. They are gathered from China, Libya and Australia. Different kinds of problems emerge and to solve them, efficient systems are created.
In the film System, we confront what happens when apparently rational decisions prove to have devastating results in real life. How deeds can hit back onthemselves if multiplicity isn’t respected. A dilemma that one has to deal with as every act can’t be foreseen and we don’t want to stop development.
Saskia Holmkvist´s work is concerned with exploring the limits of translation drawing from ways of practice within the domain of translation and how it shapes and forms relations and historical trajectories, in particular the impact on agency. The work combines aspects of ethnography and theatre to create films and performance that relate through past artworks, language, and contested history. Zooming in on gestures, fragments and distorting information so as to reconfigure histories, layered entanglements with performative translations is part of the aesthetic and theoretical fabric of her practice.
The practice builds on long-term research, where the art-making always comes out of working with a diverse array of people from a variety of backgrounds over long periods. Holmkvist considers these people, who often become friends, the main agents of the transformative potential in her work, creating non-linear narratives, suggesting alternative readings or possibilities, juxtaposing documentary with fiction and storytelling. She works in a circular mode of connectivity, bringing together themes of historic erasure and limits of translation through critical listening, oral speculation, repetitions into works of performance and film installation. Examples of this can be seen in works such as Margaret (Back Translation), Blind Understanding – New Commentary (2009-2019), Procession Action Tour (2018), as well in earlier video works such as System (2001) and Interview with Saskia Holmkvist (2005).
