Interview with Karin Dolk

Your works often incorporate sound and language. When did this interest start? And how has this affected your daily life?

My work deals with certain aspects of language as a means of examining identity and social representation.

I work mainly with video and sound because I’m interested in its relationship to time and performativity, and often find sound more suggestive than image, more difficult to pin down. Music has always been very important to me, but I pay more and more attention to all kinds of everyday sounds: cultural sound, language sound, non-verbal sound, subtle sound, noise…

In your video pieces “A sad song” and “Words wound” repetition is a common theme. Which are your philosophical thoughts on this subject matter?

Repetition implies the impossibility of repetition. What seems the same always contains a difference, a variation. However, patterns and roles in society tend to be repeated ad infinitum. I’m concerned with examining the structural and social components of repetition.

The parrot in “Words wound” repeats some words learned by rote, but most of his speech are phrases, words and sounds that create a – not always flattering – portrait of his surroundings, and in some way empower him.

The repetition in “A sad song” is related to the musical structure of Karelian laments, as well as to ideas of resilience and contemplation.

Tell us a bit about “[əˈnʌðə]” that is presented at Nextart Gallery at the moment. 

“[əˈnʌðə]” is a silent sound film, a script made solely for Foley – the sound effects produced live by a Foley artist in the post-production of movies.  The project originated from a previous project I made about film dubbing. As many of my other works, it’s related to ideas of translation, de-contextualization and meta fiction.

The sound in the film suggests several possible film stories that could exist somewhere.

However, when looking at the actual action in the film, another story appears.

The title, as well as the accompanying phonetic sound script on the walls, is connected both to the idea of sound in language and the insufficiency of language – and in a way again to a meta layer, due of the impossibility of translating a real sound to onomatopoeia and then to writing. The title also refers to being one more/different in relation to the possible “original” films and the one/fragmented body of the person that dub all the sounds and characters.

Does [əˈnʌðə] differ from your earlier work? And if yes – how? 

 “[əˈnʌðə]” connects in many ways with my earlier work. However, it’s the first time I’ve written and worked with a script, particularly a real “sound script”. I also feel it has a very clear connection to Scandinavian cinema: the materials, objects, the mise en scène…