Exhibition

Gitte Villesen:
A Silent Movie / video installation
(Dvd, 15 min 3 sec)
48 Western Magazines / video installation
(Dvd, 8 min)

Since the early 1990s, Gitte Villesen's video works have been telling stories, in a simple and unpretentious way, of every-day life and the personal and social circumstances of people she has met and whose personality, work, and life are of particular interest to her for a variety of reasons. She has incorporated the spontaneous and raw aesthetic of the home video into her work of unobtrusively and sensitively portraying people, and their pondering of life, personal memories and feelings.

As explained by her in a recent interview, she usually emphasizes two sides when talking of her works: an emotional one – related to the actual meeting with the person who is being filmed – with the construction of social relationships, norms, gender, sexuality, on the one hand, and the construction of the representation in itself – history writing, documentation, objectivity and subjectivity – with the question of who is allowed or privileged to have a voice, on the other. Whatever the content may be, the construction of the process of her works is always incorporated into the finished piece, as are reflections on the different encounters with people and the conditions in which these encounters take place.

The two videos are related to her photo installation Script for a Silent Movie, commissioned for and exhibited at “Dreamlands Burn – Nordic Art Show 2006” at the Kunsthalle, Budapest. Both the photo series and the video have been made in collaboration with filmmaker and photographer Sebestyén Kodolányi and invite the viewer to (re)visit the once legendary Budapest art club, the “Fészek.”
The films “48 Western Magazine” and “A silent Movie” present Éva Molnár, the art director of the Fészek Club, who gave Gitte Villesen and Sebestyén Kodolányi a thorough guided tour in the summer 2006. The way she moves around the Club shows her strong connectedness to it, and reflects over 50 years of experience in working there – almost as if she, herself, had become the house. In the “48 Western Magazine” we hear Dóra Hegyi’s voice as she translates Éva Molnár’s recollection about how she managed to order international art magazines and books for the library of the Fészek Club during the Communist regime, whereas in the “A Silent Movie” Villesen´s narration is communicated towards the viewer through undertitles, music is performed by Swedish musicans, Mattie Bye and The Panoptikon Orchestra, who besides recording,perform their music live to screenings of silent movies.

The work is a portrait of both Éva Molnár and the Club, but also reflects upon the process of translation and the situation of an artist being in between languages.

Gitte Villesen was Born in 1965 in Ansager, Denmark. She lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin.