Elodie Pong
2012 C'EST-A-DIRE
2009 CONTEMPORARY
2006 JE SUIS UNE BOMBE
2003-2005 SECRETS FOR SALE
2003 ADN/ARN (ANY DEAL NOW / ANY REALITY NOW
*1966. US born Swiss video artist Elodie Pong is known for her subtle, analytic works often built as cycles or in series, and which focus on human relationships, cultural codes and their impacts on contemporary society. Her visual language is cinematic, precise and acute, and unfolds through metaphors rather than linear narration. Pong's work investigates the sociological and structural characteristics of her generation, relating personal experience and that of her close environment to broader circles by creating specific conditions for individuals to perform and react to her setting. While her works until 2004 focused mainly on immediate visualisation of sociological structures such as intimacy, friendship, issues of gender and communication, Pong's more recent films can be read as multilayered analysis and deconstructions of those very themes. Indeed, Pong has concentrated more and more on exploring the precise settings of her fictions and their characteristics. The issue of the set, the character and the dialog/soundtrack have become central, the viewer becoming a part of the constellation by being offered different readings according to which works are brought together. From the visualisation of certain aspects of social relationships to the exploration of their basic structures, Pong has moved one step further in her latest installations: she portrays the reality of a generation that has lost the belief in fixed structures and identities. In thus appears the reality of people that emerged from the experience of a post- punk/post- feminist/post- everything era. While in her earlier works the individualism and the freedom to chose in any aspect of culture, politics, gender and sexuality, seemed to be a celebrated achievement, her newer series of videos ask: What are the guidelines in such a complex, personalised view of the world, society, art and the individual? Are there still any at all? And what are the consequences of such for the individual? Her work will be presented in various group shows in 2007 at: Mother's Tankstation-Dublin, Kunsthaus Baselland, Galeria Vermelho-Sao Paolo, Musée d'Art Contemporain-Lyon and Kunsthalle Wien among others. This year, Pong has published three books: SAMPLES edited by Edition Fink, a CHIER D'ARTISTE in the Pro Helvetia collection edited by Periferia, and a text entitled WE ARE KNIGHTS ON THE TRAJECTORIES OF A POST-EVERYTHING ERA published by JRP|Ringier.