Noemi Sjöberg

India DV, 2'30'', 2009 Spain/Sweden

Tell me something about you and artistic background.
I started making videos and installations during my last year at Fine Arts School (Aix en Provence, France) and during my stay in New York in 2001. My work has been exhibited in many international festivals, galleries and museums (www.noemisjoberg.com). Art is for me a necessity: to constantly question my environment and myself. Also it’s fun, it’s like searching for a treasure, it doesn’t really make sense. But somehow, art puts me in a place where there are no limits, where reality is perceived in thousand ways. There, I feel free.

Tell me about this film, initial idea and work process.
I went to India for 2 months to reflect on: “How do we perceive reality? How our brain composes and arranges these stimuli and informs us of the sensations we receive? How do we invent reality? Are we totally conditioned? I came back to Europe and started editing the video. I had no idea of what this country was. I was a complete victim of my European condition and vision of life. So, the video India  captures only impressions. The frames last for less than a second so the perception of the spectator is distorted. He will see and interpret things that maybe aren’t. Some images become subliminal and might touch his unconsciousness. As the memory of one lived reality.

Are you working on new projects at the moment?
I have just finished a video Segre River in collaboration with the musician Juan Matos Capote for the exhibition Territori Lleida in the art center La Panera (www.lapanera.cat) that will last for 3 months. I am currently preparing a new video project about Beauty / Esthetics. And I am going to be a mother in 1 month....!

Do you have specific influences in your film/video making?
Artists from the 60’s-70’s that worked on the limits of perception during that time: Peter Campus, Dan Graham, Bruce Nauman, Gary Hill and Bill Viola.

Why is it important for you to show your film/video in a festival?
To create is a necessity for me but it is also necessary to share it with an audience, to get feedback, to maybe reach people, make them react and feel reality.

What role do you think Oslo Screen Festival should have to promote your work?
Oslo Screen Festival role should be to act as a curator, trying to spread the works of all the artists to the largest public: critics, galleries, institutions, art students, art lovers, anyone...