The Abstract Prophecy Conference by Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir is a 45min long journey to the psychedelic vastness of the feminine mind. The artist controls an abstract PowerPoint blended in with music, videos, performances and poetry. It is a one-woman show but a dark haired lady will be her assistant, mixing Bloody Mary’s for her and occasionally playing one note on the keyboard. The characters in the performance are characters from non-existing films. Lost cinematic souls influenced by characters of such filmmakers as Sally Potter, Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman. The whole situation is a cinematic experience with an audience daydreaming on the borders of a film experience as real time happening. As she notes, “I feel that there is a constant flow between performance and video art. I often bring performance into my installations, like dress up in the same colors as the work, and just lie on the floor like a ghost while the viewers walk by.”
In her performances, especially her skype performances, “each person gets a special treatment, a spontaneous, dreamlike fantasy that invokes questions of the identity of the performer, who transcends a diversity of mythical roles via current image technology. … Gunnarsdóttir flirts with the notion that the persistent enchantment with technology finds its roots in religious or transcendental imagination.”
Markús T. Andrésson
Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, born 1976 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, lives and works in Reykjavík, Iceland. Gunnarsdóttir studied at UCLA in Los Angeles and at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Contact: www.asdissifgunnarsdottir.com
