KimSu Theiler: FRIGID NONSENSE: Dress a Part - Artist Statement

 

I use all the components of filmmaking: time-based-image recording, sound, performance to interrogate the epistemic foundations of how a person is defined as a member of a community and the choices we should make within that community. As a transnational, transracial adoptee I cannot take basic knowledge construction of the self for granted. This makes the telescoping between  -  the minutia of a single entity, myself, and the larger societal justifications for how each of us fits within - my major thematic concern. The sculptural potential of - placing in space - literally and metaphorically anchors my practice.

FRIGID NONSENSE: Dress a Part

Frigid Nonsense started as a slip of the ear in conversation between myself and artist and friend, Eline Mugaas (@mugaasen).

Fridtjof Nansen evidently was as hard for her to hear me say, a Norwegian name - expecting only English to come out of my mouth, as it is for me to remember how to spell (can there really be that many dissimilar consonants next to each other? Three isn’t that many, but it still looks strange to me). We couldn’t figure out if what I was saying and she was hearing was: Frigid Nonsense. And so it came to be that a few years after that conversation, I applied for an artist residency at the Oslo City Hall. A year and half later, Frigid Nonsense was researched and filmed, and then I returned home to New York City to edit.  What came out nearly ten years ago was that I would custom edit the footage for the specific show installed and programmed, and that I would perform live sound on a modular synthesizer to the site specific video edit. This installation and performance collects the scenes where photographs for publicity, ethnographic study and “dick pics” of the early 20th century are re-performed on video. Instead of being stills, we watch the making of the images that were used to sell, preserve, interpret, and inseminate the ideology of those times.

Starring Eija Ranta (https://eijaranta.com/, @_eijaranta_) as Fridtjof Nansen.

- KimSu Theiler, 2024 

Pictured: Eija Ranta