Sophia Ioannou Gjerding

Asset. Everything used. All as it used to be.

One day in 2020, a woman in her 80s decides to clean 7 spoons which were a gift given to her by her grandmother in the 1960s. She believes they are silver but, when she dips the first spoon into a can of silver polish, it vanishes. The woman is Hanne Ioannou, the grandmother of Sophia Ioannou Gjerding.

What was considered a valuable object suddenly becomes something else. The spoon falls apart, but then restores itself. Through an animated narrative it lives for a while among other things: a rotary dial phone, spinach bouquets, a cloak, a hat, a pair of trousers, and shoes.

From this vantage point, 'Asset. Everything used. All as it used to be.' examines the diverse dimensions of collecting. In doing so, it highlights the intertwined relationship between people and things.

The film begins by exploring how our relationship to other beings are influenced by video games, and in particular how certain video games mirror the act of gathering or foraging, but to the extent to which it becomes hoarding. It then considers different things that we consider to be heritage: first, a spoon from the grandmother of Sophia Ioannou Gjerding, and then inherited knowledge about insects from an entomological collection at the University of Lund (where a large proportion of their specimens were donated by “amateur collectors”). Through this the film highlights how collections become more than passive objects. They acquire an agency and a monstrosity that extends beyond the things themselves, shaking dichotomies between the individual and the group, preservation and disappearance, the user and the used.

A single detail becomes a hinge between scenarios. We shift from the collected specimen of the now-extinct butterfly Xerxes to hoarding of assets within the world of video games. A lone wolf talks about swarms and packs. Collections question what conservation means in an age of eco-crisis, the value of objects, and the idea of individualized heroism. Heritage becomes entangled with fantasy, the heroic with the domesticated, accumulation with loss. Through this, the film highlights how, in themselves, collections can dissolve its own categorization and act as storytelling devices in a world of disappearance and rupture.

Written and directed: Sophia Ioannou Gjerding
Voice acting (wizard and lone wolf): Liz Fodor
Model-making and stop motion animation: Kristina Stengaard
Costume design: Aroque Kwon
Sound Engineer: Xenia Xamanek Lopez
3D Generalist, Motion Capture Setup: Nicoline Lind
CGI, 2D animation, film recording: Sophia Ioannou Gjerding

In-game footage recorded in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Special thanks to:
Hanne Ioannou
Jadranka Rota and the Entomological Collections at Lunds University
Moesgaard Museum
Natural History Museum of Aarhus
WiredFly

Monomyth / I Do Not, 2024

Unreal Engine, duration: approx. 10 min

This laboratory work was conceived in Unreal Engine during the course of 1, 2, 3 Playtime at Inter Arts Center. The work is made in Unreal Engine and is exploring storytelling and agency in both cinematic and gaming contexts. In doing so, it employs a narrative device common in video games - the cutscene; a liminal space where player agency momentarily yields to narra-tive progression.

The work offers a decidedly linear experience with limited player options. As the "player" nav-igates through a series of linear scenes, they are accompanied by a soundscape of a scene taking place in a poetry salon. Here, two reluctant poets recite their versions of a heroic epic, a task they had for this specific evening.

These parallel tracks point towards the exhaustion of traditional narrative structures, player agency, and the pervasive narrative trope of the hero’s journey.

Voices: Sadie Margaret and Mel Torrefranca
Special thanks to: Margot Edström and Pål Schakonat

What to Keep – A playful conversation game about what to keep, what to display, and what to hide, inspired by conversations with the staff at Malmö Museum. A work by Marika Hedemyr and Sophia Ioannou Gjerding.

"What to keep" is a work made by Marika Hedemyr and Sophia Ioannou Gjerding. It explores subjects such as conservation, display and collecting.The content of the cards are derived from a series of interviews conducted with two employees at Malmö Museum (conservator Annika Edgren and aquarium curator: Jesper Flygare), as well as the family members of Hedemyr and Gjerding. Each of the interviewed were asked the same 11 questions about what to keep, what to display, and what to hide. Their answers were subsequently transformed into a card game that takes its form in between game play and conversation.

About Sophia Ioannou Gjerding:

Through research-driven works that draw on popular culture, critical theory, as well as historical sources, Sophia Ioannou Gjerding examines how image production affects us both culturally and politically. In particular, she works with the underlying power structures that characterize today’s image production, such as the representation of gender, nature and history. A key element in her work is a study of the discourses that exist in new image technology such as CGI (computer generated imagery), when the production of virtual worlds in movies and computer games creates a new discourse of objectivity. Gjerding is interested in how fiction and facts are entangled in historical narratives and museum collections, and uses artistic strategies to expose the biases that are incorporated in contemporary culture.

Visit Sophia's artist page - sophiaioannougjerding.cargo.site