Video | DV-PAL | colour | 3:18 | 2006

A video using the concept of solipsism as artistic starting point.

Feelings of misplacement normally occurs in moments where apparent contradictions appears and the fact that our conceptions of reality can, in fact, not be as universal as we like to believe is revealed. These moments can relate to a lot of different conceptions such as social norms, gender, science and so on. The feelings arising from contradictions between reality and human perception are neither negative nor unusual. They are, at least that is my basic assumption, an integrated part of human being. To be aware of this and to somehow “deal with ” the conceptions leading to these feelings, approaching them as a basic part of ones life, seems to be a healthy response and a solution. Since reality, to a very high degree, is constituted from within, it does not help much to search for a perfect position in the world. It is rather recommendable to liberate from the very idea that this can be found.

 

I have been confronted with situations leading to feelings of misfit and misplacement very early in my life. I guess that is inevitable if you question your surroundings, like many children does, or maybe just inevitable. As it does to a lot of  children, my questioning lead me to solipsism, even before I ever heard of Descartes or any theory of epistemology at all. The idea of being alone in reality, creating the universe out of my own mere thinking, was an idea that made my feelings of not belonging somehow more manageable, at the same time, of course, feeding these very same feelings.

I wanted to make solipsism the subject of a video because I believe solipsism to be a reaction on the feelings of misplacement and a way to cope with the brutality of reality, rather than a pure philosophical theory. Because the centre of solipsism, the person who (alone) is, is the ultimate star, the piece  had to have some star aesthetic. Thus I made it a kind of music video with a person in love with him self, repeatedly singing: “I perceive the world, I perceive myself. Everything I see, is me.”

http://falsnaes.com/works/video/solipsism/solipsism.mov
http://falsnaes.com

gefördert/unterstützt durch: danish art council, commitee for visual arts