Influenza (on Kirstine Roepstorff)

Nominated on:Feature Documentary

Film Info

Film Year: 2018

Film Duration: 76 min

Country: Denmark

Language: Danish, English, French, Italian

Director

Bjarke Underbjerg

Film Category
Synopsis

When artist Kirstine Roepstorff was appointed Danish national representative at the 57th edition of one of the world’s most prestigious art events, La Biennale di Venezia, a quite specific yet ambiguous notion materialized in her mind: influenza. Hovering between Kirstine Roepstorff’s mind, her home and studio in rural Denmark, concrete sculptors in Copenhagen, weavers in Paris and architects and gardeners in Venice, the film portrays an artist from inside her head and out through her eyes and hands on to the expertise of different artisans. It depicts the artwork’s materializing process from an intangible mental hint to a dense physical manifestation, and the widespread yet complex relations between art and craftmanship, idea and realization, that seems so symptomatic of contemporary art and its arenas. For Roepstorff, darkness is the ability to allow ourselves to walk into the unknown, into all forms dissolved and in this film we walk along her as she imagines, articulates, shapes and enters her generous, transformative, fertile darkness.