Doing Fiction oder "Authentizität" als Darstellung. Über Videoarbeiten von Saskia Holmkvist

Abstract

Sønke Gau

Doing Fiction or Authenticity as Representation. On videoworks by Saskia Holmkvist

In her videoworks “Interview with Saskia Holmkvist”, “In Character”, and “Role Control” Swedish artist Saskia Holmkvist investigates performative aspects of everyday life . She

 looks into the question how the impression of “authenticity” and credibility can be produce and in doing so she visualises their implicit structures of power and manipulation. Here, Holmkvist succeeds in eluding the verdict of simulation and dissimulation more by performing something like representation itself than by displaying, i.e. to stage those works, thus making them “transparent”. Holmkvist’s videos act as criticism of representation that stage relations between communication and representation, mediality, identity and power thus presenting “freedom of action”. Therefore, a second topic of her works is the opening of (inter-)subjective, social and political spaces and the consolidation of potentially emancipative “capacities to act” of subjects and groups.