Installation view of Persona Project at Moderna Exhibition 2010, Moderna Museet, Stockholm
The word ‘Persona’ – meaning ‘mask’ – derives from the Latin per (through) and sonare (to sound), essentially ‘that through which the actor speaks’ (early Greek actors wore masks.) Its meaning is usually understood as the voice representing the speaker in a literary work or a character in a play.
‘Persona’ is also the name of my favorite film, made by Ingmar Bergman in 1966. It is a story about an actress that is refusing to speak (Liv Ullman) and her nurse (Bibi Andersson), who cares for her in a vacation home by the sea.
Who speaks in a film? The director? The actors? The viewer, through the interpretation – a parasitical footnote – he or she makes, based on individual experiences and desires? In this project I have attempted to extract the voices in the periphery of the film Persona, its production and reception. I wanted to shed light on the agents not considered as authors (authorities) but that somehow still touched some aspect of the narrative. The archive consists of 7 works (7 voices) that are shown separately or together in an installation. Here you can access some material from the individual projects.
(2000)
(2001)
(2002)
Documents
(2002 – 2008)
Photographs, documents and digital video
(2008 – 2009)
Text panels, sound
(2009 – 2010)
Photographs and documents
(2010)
16 mm film