kom og se rommet mitt, 2024
Single-channel video loop (delegated performance), 64’16”
1920 x 1080 px
as heatkill with Mimii Midorikawa and benoni
at Puskas, Alta (NO)
A man believes he is confined in a printer room and attempts to reach the outside world through a live feed.
As a printer issues instructions, language destabilizes and the viewer becomes an implicated witness to his possible captivity.
A looped CCTV-style video shows a man confined to a former printer room. Time is continuous and unedited.
Kom se rommet mitt
Brokkoli igjen gul hvorfor gul
Jeg lukter råtten skitten alltid skitten
Mister bevisstheten hver dag men hvorfor hvorfor sover jeg så mye
(translation)
Come see my room
Broccoli again yellow why yellow
I smell rotten dirty always dirty
I lose consciousness every day but why why do I sleep so much
The video presents a single, uninterrupted take of a person who believes he is being held captive for an unspecified amount of time. The air in the room is heavy. A low mechanical buzzing is audible above the ceiling.
At a certain point, a printer in the room activates and begins issuing instructions. The messages imply that the space is under surveillance and that the video feed is being watched by a group of people. The printer encourages the captive person to locate the camera, to prove his humanity, and to seek help from those watching.
The performer attempts to communicate with the outside world by holding up handwritten messages and printed pages directly to the camera. Language gradually fractures between Norwegian and English. Thoughts loop, compress, and lose clarity. What begins as an attempt at escape slowly collapses into exhaustion, confusion, and paranoia.
The work operates as a delegated performance, filmed in one continuous take. The performer was given only a loose psychological and situational framework prior to recording. There was no script, no rehearsal, and no clear endpoint. The moment of stopping was not communicated to the performer immediately.
Positioned between surveillance footage, live transmission, and staged confinement, the piece asks whether the figure on screen is a captive person, a delusional subject, or a system performing captivity onto itself. The viewer is placed in an unstable role: witness, accomplice, or potential rescuer — without any clear way to intervene.
(In Puskas, the video played on a TV screen above the dining tables, replacing the usual sports broadcast or music video)
(scanned pieces of attempts at written communication by benoni)