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The point of departure for Winter Event – antifreeze is a Fluxus instruction with the same title written by George Brecht in 1966. During a journey in the High Arctic in 2009 Katja Aglert brought this instruction and interpreted it through a series of performative acts every time she went on shore; she picked up a piece of ice and held it in her hand until it melted. The performances, 11 in all, were documented with HD camera and was the foundation for the film.
In the film Aglert choose to shift focus from the central performative act and instead use the peripheral material; ’behind the scenes’ before and after the melting act, as a way to narrate a counter story based on her own local experience, juxtaposing the general clichés and heroic myths of the Arctic. Additionally the idea was to investigate how the specific qualities of the film form can be used in the re-enactment process from performance to film, and how the production of meaning changes with this transformation.
Katja Aglert is a Swedish artist based in Stockholm.
She works in different media such as video, sound, interventions and text. ”I often collect material for a project as a documentary process, and with the assembled material I strive to re-create and concentrate the essence, with the aim to interpret and decode it, and by that create a shift in ”reality” to make it more ambivalent, playful and dramaturgically interesting”.
Aglert exhibited internationally at Overgaden-Instute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark and at Gigantic Art Space, New York, USA. Her work has been shown in Sweden at museums and art centers including Liljevalchs konsthall, Bildmuseet Umeå, and Örebro Konsthall. She screened her work in contexts including KonstBio, Stockholm; Made in Video, Copenhagen; TRUNK/Östersund. Aglert is one of the co-founders of the web based project SQUID, hosted by Tensta konsthall, ak28, Ersta konsthall and IASPIS in Sweden; and Pro Arte Institute in Russia and Manifesta 6 in Cyprus. Previous years solo exhibitons include Polarmuseet Tromsø, Marabouparken, Biologiska Museet och Kabinett – Stockholm among many others.
