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 installation consists of a cyanotype, a technique invented by an astronomer, in which two types of iron salts are coated onto a substrate that is then exposed to sunlight, and a film projected onto it. In the film, large felines are seen moving around an artificial pond. Repetitive circular movements, constantly moving but sometimes some of the animals stop to drink some water. It is a dreamlike state, day and night are merged. Captured animals and captured images. Captivate instincts. It is a closed system.
The image is rasterized, a reminder of another vision. An extreme mechanical and automated image reality, where the production of images can almost be seen as a mechanical extension of the body. I am interested in photography’s own materiality. Its basic chemistry is materially conditioned, dependent on the extraction of raw materials – silver mines and developed early printing processes using gelatin from animal carcasses. Both copper plates and silver are essential in the development of photography, and the metals reached photographers’ studios via colonial networks.
Lina Selander (b. 1973) lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.
Lina Selander’s films and installations can be read as compositions or thought models, where ideas and conditions are weighed and tested. She examines the relationships between memory and perception, photography and film, language and image. The precise, rhythmic editing and use of sound create their own temporality and a strong inner pressure. Selander’s oeuvre recurrently explores a fascination for the phenomena and technologies that make images possible, thereby enabling history to be documented. Montage is used in the films to juxtapose images, while entailing a potential loss of content. Image meets text in a flow where meaning arises from the ostensibly unrelated, like echoes through and between the works. Selander’s works constitute a dense archive of observations, occasionally in dialogue with other films, art or literature. Their subject matters often stem from historic or ideological junctions, where one system or physical place collapses and something new begins to emerge.
Selander’s work has been shown at Kunst Haus Wien, Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), London; Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; VOX – Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal and in international group shows such as Venice Biennale 2015; Kyiv Biennale 2015; Seoul Media City Biennale 2014; Manifesta 2012 in Genk, Belgium; Bucharest Biennale 2010; and at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
