Abstraction starts in the head, and a lot can happen on the way from the head to the hand. Erla Haraldsdóttir stretches the boundaries of drawing. Her animated films deal with documentary recordings – both filmic and by means of actual pencil or felt pen drawings. Foraying into psychogeographic processes, they ask fundamental questions on perception: how do memories come about, and how do emotions override visual perception? Haraldsdóttirs works are not merely narrative, putting the emphasis on the process of image production, which is always already an appropriation and reshaping of reality. Her stories manage to convey a wide array of feelings, be it love sickness, as in Sad with Satie, or fascination with mystic rituals, the subject of her latest work.The storyboard is therefore mainly the framework for a visualization of emotions, while the narratives detach themselves from the protagonists.

Gegen den Strich, Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien 2007, curated by Christoph Tannert, Valeria Schulte Fischedich