Francine was a Machine (2019). HDV, 13:38 min. © Marte Aas & BONO 2019
Marte Aas in conversation with Helena Holmberg, director of Kunsthall Trondheim. The talk will be held in Norwegian.
“I want to tell a story” – that’s how the film which loans its title to this exhibition, starts. The story that Marte Aas is relating to is the one about René Descartes’ mechanical daughter, a fable about a man of rationality and science creating a human looking machine in the place of his dead daughter Francine. During a travel through a storm at sea, the seamen discovered the doll in Descartes’ cabin and horrified threw it into the ocean.
Francine was a machine, an automaton, an early cousin to today’s Sophias, soon becoming normal parts of everyday life – like the fridge, maybe already quite intelligent and greeting us with a stiff smile, if we care to notice it? In Marte Aas’ works the everyday is animated with a gaze that presents us with something that is familiar but undefined – in a way that is reminiscent of of the naive gaze of a stranger encountering a new place, or that confused moment we can experience before interpretation sets in. Throughout her oeuvre she applies this gaze, which also is a trust in the image and in the camera. Given time – what will emerge? What can be seen? In the seemingly ordinary and everyday, layers and new meaning surprisingly appear.
This presentation of Marte Aas’ works, combines film, photography and objects. Exhibition period: January 17 – April 28, 2019.