eme emauto - performance & text
eme emauto, 2010, performance.
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"eme emauto: the title of Karolina Erlingsson's work refers to the Socratic/Platonic idea that thought is the
self's silent discussion with itself. A simple yet revolutionary notion, implying that the thinking self is
divided, that its self-presence is fragmented, that the self is inhabited by the parties of a dialogue.
Erlingsson appears to strive for the enactment of such a silent, fragmented presence, and to turn it into a
figure representing the relationship between the work of art and its viewer. eme emauto exists in multiple
versions. The original version consists mainly of a film showing an empty stage, in a continuous take with a
stationary camera. The three soundtracks to the film reproduce the ambient sounds of the empty space.
The only noticeable development is in the dreamy, fragmented text shown in a display above the stage. The
most recent version of the work consists of a performance in which Erlingsson herself recites and enacts the
text, which consists of simple instructions and short phrases that are repeated and permutated like echoes:
"hide / hide and forget / forget / forget body / forget body that lies / that lies / lies / lies and fell /
fell". The words suggest rather than tell a story, as though begging to be completed by the actors absent
from the stage or the potential viewers of the performance – just as the self can only become itself when
reality intrudes on the inner dialogue of the mind and opens it up to the outer, the others."
-catalogue text to The Moderna Exhibition 2010, by Kim West.
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eme emauto, 2010, text, The Moderna Exhibition 2010. (excerpt)
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