The Celestial Equator:  Reflections, 


A series of three videos, 2012 

HD video: 05.14'



Excerpt from catalogue text: 

- - - Bergendahl’s second film Reflections emphasizes the illusive as it abandons narrative on behalf of a play with darkness and light, an almost animated screen. In the dark night, the two women blow huge bubbles, and these fantastic bubbles become other bodies with which to interact. The lights of the night are reflected on their surfaces. The porosity of the bursting bubbles and the blackness surrounding them bring to mind the vanitas paintings of the Baroque period – sinister and silky-surfaced still lifes where decaying fruits and worm-ridden skulls represent the unknown with an air of something hidden, a worldly fragility.



Here, Bergendahl uses the bubble – which holds a scientific logic but also has a playful cultural significance – to create a poetic, mystic and aestheticized image illustrating how physical phenomena are events passing in time. She does so with a lightness, playing with the childlike joy of the bubble, leaving behind the gravity of the vanitas skull. - - -

Text: Ida Marie Hede

Still images from video: Reflections