01
The Man in the Room / Rummanden
Loop. Kinect to video, 2020
Text: free quoted from Storm P
The Man in the Room video installation by Sophie Hjerl is made out of material originally filmed for a solo VR and installation exhibition named En Suite, that due to Corona has been postponed until 2021.
Ironically the scene presented here is one of many portraying a man in a room, isolated, who starts to multiply himself as he becomes more and more desperate. Despite being filmed some weeks before the Corona lock-down, the presentation strangely and retrospectively makes clear references to the time we have come to live in 2020/2021.
One of the men says: It is strange, lately, I have started talking to myself.
The other same man replies: Then you can just stop answering.
02
Solitary
HD, silent, 2018-2021
Dur.: 4 min
The work is a video recording of a person outside a window, seen through a curtain. He walks back and forth without a direction and without relating to what is happening around him.
03
ASK MASKS
HD, silent, 2017
Dur: 1:20 min (loop)
In this videopiece the origin and original use of the chosen masks are being examined. The masks moves around in circles, as empty 2-dimensional shells.
But, by time and movement, the masks turns into 3-dimensional objects in themselves without the mask wearer.
This makes them both more concrete and at the same time more mysterious.
The video piece stages the meeting between two masks from different parts of the world from different times and with different references. They both seem out of context and it is the ultimate look of something forgotten, hidden or abandoned to look at an empty mask. But, by the constant circular movements, the masks starts to interchange with one and eachother, which also referes to life beeing in constant movement and dynamic exchange.
Masks:
Guy Fawkes (also known as Anonymous mask). African Yaka mask, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Holstebro Kunstmuseum.
04
Premordial Sea, Premordial Noise
HD, 2017
Dur.: 2:10 min, loop
The video shows a videotake recorded in PAL of a puddle. Because of ice on top of the water and because of cars driven by, the water waves, which also reflects the streetlight. The footage has been edited and zoomed into and therefore stands out as a sort of white noise signal of an old analog televison, which was considered as noise from space - white noise… The original sound follows the piece, slowed down.
The videopiece can too be read as a comment to the climate changes and the floods. The sound resembles the sound of the sea and suddenly also sounds like explodings/ shootings occurs, as a reference to the current state of war and refugees fleeing across oceans.
05
ART
HD, 2016
Dur.: 14:50 min (shortened version)
ART is a videoinstallation originally made for 3 split screens: The right video placed in the center of the room and the left mirrored and projected on two opposite screens.The title ART referes to the art itself, but the word also means 'species' in Danish. The human race as the only species making and living with the ART. The grids are inspired by the backgrounds in many of Giacomettis paintings and drawings, where one sees lines of the studio, a home or even a more urban landscape. The moon carries the symbol of the unconsciousness, but here one sees the 'backside' of the moon too. By being animated, the moon turns around itself and shows us the whole of its surface while man models sculpture. First shown at the exhibition Væren Værket Verden / Being The Work The World, Holstebro Kunstmuseum, 2016.
06
Baguette
HD
Dur.: 10:33 min, 2016
The Art Video 'Baguette' is based on the idea of eating a baguette while saying the word for it. The idea for this originated around a table where SH along with the performer sat and ate bread. In the act of filming a person while he/she eats, a very clear allusion is made to a film by the Danish director Jørgen Leth; '66 Scenes from America ', where Andy Warhol, among others, is filmed while eating a hamburger. The setup of eating at the table is therefore referring to this film, but the content is different. In 'Baguette' we see a person in a naked, artificial space, eating something that is a very synthetic representation of a baguette. To sit at a table and eat bread can undoubtedly also be seen as a clear religious symbol, like the bread in the Last Supper, but here with no apostles and no wine. He eats his own body, so to speak, which somehow eliminates him and almost makes him an atheist. Some of the issues associated with this video might be: What eats what? and what is it that is ultimately defined by what?
07
Nothing But Fire (meta-stasis)
1. edition.
Dv-cam to full HD, Dur.: 1:44 min 2001/ 2014
#3 out of a serie of 4 about the four elements.
A woman is seen in a condition of the will to live and survive by the sense of fire, light, energy, within her and in the surroundings.
08
M o t h e r h o o d
Full HD, 2012
Dur.: 6:28 min
Single video version
Motherhood deals with motherhood, but also in a more literal earthly sense.
Since the set of Motherhood was ready, late autmun 2012, it was clear that it was New York as the city imagined and just 2 weeks after, the hurricane Sandy arrives and flood the streets of NY....
The POV passes through a “hood” and leaves the viewer with suggestive images of fertility, vigilance, flooding, the liquid versus the fixed and the masculine versus the feminie. At first hand the milk seems to represents the femine, and the monnumental houses being the masculine, but while watching one can suddenly also experience the milk as a masculine matter and the buildings as feminine monumental stability. SH has recreated what could almost be seen as a kind of primeval landscape camouflaged in an urban scenography, with associations with 3d programs shapes and color positions.
The sound is created so it can be played in surround sound and the scale of the video is to be set large when exhibited, as premiered at The Minuit Vernissage, in the cinema Grand Teatret, Copenhagen, curated by John Kørner, January 2013
09
Navndrukken/ navnløs (Navndrukken / nameless)
Full HD, 2012
Dur.: 5:16 min
Best to be viewed in full screen. Use the full screen buttom in the right corner.
In the video 'Navndrukken / navnløs' occur Ursula Andkjær Olsen's poem, which is a paraphrase of the famous children's song 'Langt ude i skoven / Deep in the woods'.
In Olsen's poem is the song's familiar objects exchanged with other objects and in their repetition and relationship building a surreal text. Sophie Hjerls video can be seen as a parallel process to this surreal image of the forest and being. In her dual projected work appears a woman respectively lying and walking in a forest. It is not known whether she has indulged or surrendered, is dead or alive, or whether she is asleep or awake. The author recites the poem accompanied by a faint hum of the well-known children's song that brings an extra layer to the repetition of words in the text of the film images. This piece connects to something familiar and at the same time repeats and connects andissolves itself, again and again.
10
Focus
Full HD, 2011
Dur.: 3:11 min
A woman is filmed from the top. She has an object- a stone around her neck, which is being moved in circles around her body. The theme is focus and the piece touches the fact of a more matriarchal leaded world!? One could almost look at the woman as one being in a sort of underworld. Or placed in an eternal parallel world where she tries and balance the mental and physical state of the world.
The piece also seeks to ask questions about the relationship between body and soul! What about if the soul is the stone around her neck. Or what if the stone represents the human body and the human body the soul?
The soul could be placed outside the body. As an electron moving around its nucleus. Is the act separating or combining the genders and the soul /body aspect? She is a new ATLAS, and he is a she...
11
Perspective 1
Animation, 2011
Dur.: 3:19 min
(The videos Perspective 1 & 2 were projected seperated on opposite walls. One at a time. Please use headphones, while It works in zones not possible for eg. Mac laptop build in speakers to play fully)
We all live in the digital age. It is daily life now to navigate within the digital tools. Our hole lifes seems to be "backed-up".
Computers and the games are every day toy for many children and young people. What perspective does that add in the long run?
How does one transform the immaterialistic world into the real physical world. Will the gap between these two worlds disappear, e.g. the terrible massacre around the world, where it shows that the person was playing computergames...?
In this piece one will view the perspective, from a hole new angle. A new horizon is arising… which fells both safe, known, fantastic, tempting and yet sometimes very unfamiliar. What are the consequences of the new horizon.
12
Perspective 2
Animation, 2011
Dur.: 3:19 min
13
Love Letters (Prove Your Love)
HD, 2011
Dur.: 2:18 min
If love is strong and eternal, it might needs no words? Or it could be that the missing letters on the white pieces of papers are showing the lack of the feeling of love?
The video is made from a dream, showing empty pieces of papers in layers, in the serach of an ex-boyfriends love.
14
Beginnings: Waiting
DV-cam, 2006/2009
Dur.: 4:10 min
The video comes from the investigation of when something has its start and its end.
A woman sits alone waiting, as other parts of her all ready has arrived, is on its way or even further.
15
Silence
DV-cam, 2006/2007
Dur.: 3:08 min
Silent
1st edition made for the Dance Concert "Blue Print" by Aaben Dans Productions touring Denmark in 2006, where SH was engaged as videoartist.
A shadow has been filmed and inverted in the editing.
The perception of the body as a substantial figure is thereby dissolved.
Body parts are by these acts displaced and the sensing of the body seems even more close.
16
Gravity of Paradise
DV-cam, 2005
Dur: 1:24 min
We are hereby presented for a smashing visual poem. - Who, where, what, when and why...are only some of the questions one asks after watching this short video. The invisible cast could be: Adam, Eve, Newton, feminists, nudists, fantasies, dreams, nightmares, wishes and worries or Gods!
17
CurtainCalls
DV-cam, 2003
Dur: Loop 5:00 min, total 19:00 min
A videopiece about space and condensations, splits and transformation.
A stage curtain is moving by itself? Is there anyone, behind or in front?
Music made by 48 samplings of the rooms materials + text and voice by Sophie Hjerl saying: History is only for the dead, You can't turn the world around, cause it is already round..., and some Chinese. The video is looped several of times - the music has a longer lenght than the video which makes a constant change of the rhytmn of the seen.
18
Frame / Tv-Star
DV-cam, 2002/ adjusted 2014
Dur.: 1:00 min
A camera filming a monitor and recording while turning on and off the light in the studio. The lightning created the white space. The sound is a splitted tone develop
ing. First one hears this sound, it starts to occur as a sound which is everywhere and the television could occur as a black hole! This piece was made before the entrance of the flatscreens. Shown in Danish State Television where SH was invited for making a videopiece with only the lenght of one minute, and then titled: TV-Star.
19
Phases of Change
Super VHS, 1999
Dur.: 30:20 min
Silent
"Phases of Change". What happens if the classical 3-dimensional portrait bust is being transformed into a modern media? One experience through this videopiece the artistically change in creating portraits, as here shown by video, as well as the change of facial expression. Phases of Change: The new phase of art by the new medias such as video and the facial (Faces of Change) changes of expressions explored through time.
Analog editxtern VHS. Editing made by combining fast forward and rewinding in another speed and so on, which results in this sometimes strange surreal speed and movements.
20
Dream of Coincidences
Super 8 to S-Vhs, 1998
Dur.: 7:00 min
Silent
A travel through Ireland by car filmed on Super 8.
The title referes to James Joyce's written passage "Stream of Conciousness" from "Ulysses". The Super 8 was projected then video filmed and finally edited analogue. The result became this little moving images -- like a 3-dimensional concentration of the seen. The seen as we might restore it somewhere in our memory?
- A sort of a hidden abstract stream of transforming image(s) underneath the socalled naturalistic world of images. A primal view or like an awake organic dream in a world of coincidences...?
21
ROOL
Super-8 to Beta-cam, 1998
Dur: 6:36 min
#1 out of four short movies showing the four elements. This piece is about earth. A woman travels into the unknown at night by rolling on earth. The intention was to make the audience aware of sensing the body -- the gravity and time as something linked to earth. The sense of just being by bodily repeating movement. Absurd, abstract -- but, anyway linked to some saddhues reality, as told during the editing. A saddhu in India made a travel by rooling on earth 3000 kilometers -- taking him 2 months, to reach a temple, accompagnied by a little orchestra. Very well reviewed in "Berlingske Tidende", named as a sensual visual poem...