30 x 3' - Marijke van Warmerdam Artist Talk

From the 1990s, Marijke van Warmerdam (1959) gained international renown for her film loops: where the beginning and end of films are spliced together, so that they endlessly repeat, often with a hypnotic result. Swedish art curator and critic Daniel Birnbaum referred to her back then in Frieze Magazine as the “Loop Guru of the Nineties”.

Van Warmerdam: “I see my films as an undivided entity, even if the film is made up of several shots. Particularly when I make a film into a loop, it feels like a sculpture that you can walk around.”

Van Warmerdam’s work doesn’t tell stories – rather she trusts to the visual power of her subjects: a girl doing a handstand; a hat being carried by the wind; a ball dancing on the water.

In 2011, Van Warmerdam made the transition from analogue film to digital and all of her films were restored, digitised and conserved by Eye. The artist: “Analogue film undeniably has a more physical character compared to digital film. The celluloid passes in front of the lamp and the lens, resulting in a projection – which is almost as wondrous as when, a long time ago, I experienced my first film loop, as a child in a carrousel. Meanwhile I am coming to really appreciate the many opportunities that digital film offers.”

Thirty guests invited by the artist will each reflect on the nature and meaning of Van Warmerdam’s work: one loop, one speaker.