J Tobias Anderson

Where did it all start?
1080p, 1m10s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 16:9
© 2017

The simplest of questions. An overwhelming silence. The conundrum of existence.

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Remake
1080p, Loop 9s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 16:9
2016

Being a remake of a remake, “Remake” is also a remake of an appropriation, and flirts with film history as well as with the history of video art.

A Work of Art
1080p, 1m36s
B&W, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 16:9
© 2016

A reflection on the artist’s own work, mirrored in a dialogue involving three secondhand characters. Together they make an honest evaluation of the artwork to reveal the harsh truth.

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Allt blir självklart, genomlyst/
All Becomes Obvious, Transparent
1080p, 2m30s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 16:9
© 2015

In a colorful setting, where thoughts and ideas aren’t necessarily black or white, a situation of non-communication is enacted. Two men and a woman are throwing their most inner thoughts at each other, but finding little solace in the others’ words. Communication can sometimes be unidirectional, even though a dialogue is taking place, and where certainty can be a comfort, perhaps skepticism and doubt should be the default.

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Double Take
1080p, 1m41s
B&W, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 16:9
2013

“Intermezzo” by Gregory Ratoff (1939). One scene, two different sequences, striking similarities. The two parts are juxtaposed with each other to emphasize this parallelism. Additionally, a new, doubled musical score is also created.

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The Lower Hand
HD, Loop 25s
Colour, Mute, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2013

“Take a look at these hands. Take a look at these hands. The hand speaks.” “The Lower Hand” displays a continuous battle between four hands, with constant changes to the hierarchy.

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From the Villain
HD, Loop 43s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2013

“From the Villain” is a short loop, extracting a small part of an all time classic, reducing it into an animated fragment of itself. The simplicity of the work, as well as the conceptual framework, resembles the mute loop “Al ladro!” from 2005.

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A Sensation!
HD, 1m38s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2012

Material is what counts!

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Look at These Hands
2-channel HD installation
Loops 14s & 1m9s
Colour, Mute/Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2011

“Take a look at these hands. Take a look at these hands. The hand speaks.” This installation contains two separate parts, the mute loop “Look at These Hands”, as well as the video “A Hand That Speaks”.

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A Hand That Speaks
HD, Loop 1m9s
Screening version 1m17s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2011

“Take a look at these hands. Take a look at these hands. The hand speaks.” wApart from being a single channel work, “A Hand That Speaks” is also included in the 2-channel installation “Look at These Hands”.

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A Veracity A Mendacity
2-channel 1080p installation
Screening version 4m58s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 16:9
© 2010

A man in confrontation with two women, one vulnerable and easily influenced, the other hesitant and questioning. On one hand the man is preching a veracity to the already converted and on the other a mendacity to the doubtful. Or is it the other way around? “A Veracity A Mendacity” questions if there, in the name of reason, can exist only one truth to any situation, and who should have the mandate to tell others what is right and what is wrong.

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The Wind
Digital Video, 3m44s
B&W, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2009

"These words are all true. These words are all used. This is the way the wind is blowing. This is the wind of the reality in which we live. All words are already spoken. All things are already said. Nothing is original. Nothing is new."

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Flyktpunkten/
The Vanishing Point
Digital Video, Loop 2m20s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2008

Four people are lost in a desolate landscape, waiting for someone to come to their rescue. When an airplane finally approaches, their hope is lightened and at the same time, so is their despair. “The Vanishing Point” is a looped video dealing with issues of humanity, hope, selfishness and inability to see the needs of others.

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Delusion Disillusion
Digital Video, 3m33s
B&W, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3 or 16:9
© 2008

A dark forest, a neverending road, two men with differing ideas on how to approach a problem. The outline of “Delusion Disillusion” is quite simple, but the possibilities of interpretation are more complex. Are the men referring to a matter of more personal character, or are they speaking of something much more general?

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Where Am I to Go?
Digital Video, 3m20s
B&W, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3 or 16:9
© 2008

An intriguing mixture of events before, during and after a confrontation between a man and his own self. The riddle evolvs and expands into a maze of possible interpretations, and the clues on how to solve the puzzle lie deeply woven within the words that are spoken. Where are we to go now?

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Going Nowhere Fast
Digital Video, 4m22s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3 or 16:9
© 2007

An animated video telling the story of days to come, maybe already our future. The world is moving without direction, led by a superpower that lacks a global philosophy. A society is shattered into fragments of what it was. Pieces are scattered over a desolate landscape, where four people are searching for the remains and answers to what has happened. It is now up to us to decide the path of tomorrow. Perhaps time is important, more so than we realize.

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Institution
Digital Video, 3m33s
B&W, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2006

“Institution” evolvs around the mind of a person, and explores situations within a confined sterile environment, much resembling a mental institution. The main focus of the work is a woman and her insecurity in her own sanity, illustrated mainly in the soundtrack, where we can hear the woman’s voice speaking in short contradicting sequences.

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Freedom's Steel?
2-channel installation, Loop 6m48s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2006

With shootings at workplaces happening more and more often in the U.S.A, the National Rifle Association of America are still fighting for the right for people to bring concealed firearms to these environments. Based on sayings and slogans from this organization, and incidents happening over recent years, “Freedom’s Steel?” leaves you to wonder about how a legislation like that could ever be just.

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A Small Part of the World
1-channel installation, Loop 1m21s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3 or 16:9
© 2006

Chase
Digital Video, 2m24s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3 or 16:9
© 2005

The famous high speed car chase of “Bullitt” from 1968, cars roaming in the streets of San Francisco. “Chase” has, like “Prairie Stop, Highway 41” and “Bodega Bay School” from 2004, an animated setting, and excludes the essential items that the original version focused on – the cars.

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Whereto I Go
Digital Video, 4m46s
B&W, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2005

A video that displays a man’s confrontation with his own self. A meeting that is not always as rewarding as one might have hoped. Classic filmsequences have been re-cut and animated to illustrate this dilemma, and the final imagery is created in a highly contrasted style, with characters echoing of decades from long ago.

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Al ladro!
1-channel installation, Loop 1m26s
Colour, Mute, Aspect Ratio 4:3 or 16:9
© 2005

“Al ladro!” is a short loop, only showing the absolute climax of a movie. The components used are strictly the main ingredients from a scene in Vittorio De Sica’s “The Bicycle Thief” from 1948. These are animated and looped, buildings and other objects have been removed from the original scene.

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Prairie Stop, Highway 41
Digital Video, 9m26s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2004

The famous cropdusting scene from “North by Northwest”, one of the most classic action sequences ever made – but in this version in an animated setting and without the people, vehicles and dialogue that originally create the action.

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State of Fear
Digital Video, 6m40s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2004

Inspired from George W Bush’s 2004 State of the Union speech, “State of Fear” creates a message of its own, dealing with events happening in the contemporary world, a quite different statement than the original text’s. Who has really got ambitions of empire in our world?

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A North Window for the Man With Vertigo
1-channel installation, 43m30s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2004

Created from eight Alfred Hitchcock classics, “A North Window for the Man With Vertigo” takes a vast step into exploring ways of using material that usually is not visible. Only the very edges of the movies are used, edges one usually never sees, or atleast never thinks very much about while viewing the original movie. A regular TV-monitor generally always crops the image on the inside of the parts used. In “A North Window for the Man With Vertigo” these extremely forgotten parts create the whole image, which becomes almost entirely abstract, and in constant transformation. The images, as well as the sound, take on a life of their own.

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A classic build-up for a classic thriller sequence. However, in this animated setting the main ingredients are missing – there are no birds, no people, no dialogue. What happens with the scenery when a setting is altered in this way? Where does the tension go, and what atmosphere is left to echo through the lingering images?

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The project “Ögonblick/Moments” takes off in a will to mediate different aspects of time, and what happens when you freeze the time – trying to find out what a moment is, and of what it consists. Life is made of a tremendous number of moments where most pass us without any greater notice. The intention with the project is to visualize some of these rather ordinary and seemingly unimportant moments – a try to hold on to something passing and transient.

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Imagine a work made entirely from parts of old movies that has never before been seen. In “Sliced Classics” this is applicable, atleast when it comes to viewing the appropriated originals on a TV-monitor. “Sliced Classics” is a work with the same conceptual take-off as “Nine Piece Rope” – which is to move the focus of the viewer from the centre to the peripheral areas of the image. In “Sliced Classics” this idea is carried to extremes. Eight classic Hollywood movies make the base of the new work, but only the very edges of the movies are used, edges one usually never sees, or atleast never thinks very much about while viewing the original movie. The project “Sliced Classics” is an extensive work containing eight separate parts, and the total length is around 45 minutes.

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Nine Piece Rope
Digital Video, 2m24s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 2002

In September 2002 the video “Nine Piece Rope” was finished. It’s Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” compressed into two minutes and ten seconds, cut into nine pieces, and put together again in a non-chronological order. The work is trying to move the focus of the viewer from the place the original filmmakers had in mind, to other, more peripheral areas of the image.

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“879” is based upon 879 drawn still images from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “North by Northwest”, originally made in a transparent black and white version in 1998. This is the colour version of the same work. The images, that were chosen from the Swedish translation of the movie, were replaced in cronological order, two frames per illustration, and through this a completely new expression and a new work is created.

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“Everybody Wants to Be Grant”, is a further development of “My Name Is Grant”, and goes farther in investigating the pros and cons of celebrityhood, with basis in identity in general and specifically Cary Grant. The work is formed by a simple imagery, which in diffuse slow-motion sequences interplay with a more complex soundtrack. The title comes from a statement made by a journalist whilst interviewing Grant. “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant”, the journalist is supposed to have said, at which Grant replied: “So would I”.

“Active Passive Passage Conversation” is a two-minute video that deals with people’s inability to communicate with each other in common situations. How we speak beside one another, do not listen to what is really said, and do not say what we really mean. A big problem in everyday life, for far too many. Visually the work is made in a colourful, highly contrasted style, with characters reminding us of past decades. The dialogue is created only from cut-out lines of movies from the 40s, 50s and 60s.

My Name Is Grant
Digital Video, 1m52s
Colour, Stereo, Aspect Ratio 4:3
© 1999

“My Name Is Grant” is a manysided work, which investigates the icon role, that Cary Grant had already during his lifetime, and that puts the spectator in an imaginative centre to be on the same level as the subject of the video. The work is the first in a series of works, which with basis in Grant inverstigates things like celebrityhood, identity, dual personalities and media hype. The take-off from Grant is partly because Cary Grant really was an alias for Archibald Leach, something that occationally made him confused in the search of his own self. Originally being a soundwork, with the central point in Grant’s monologue, the video is illustrated by aesthetically put sceneries, that do not interfear with the video’s soundtrack. All pictures are chosen and created frame by frame, the same procedure as in animation.

“879” is based upon 879 drawn still images from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “North by Northwest”, redone into a transparent black and white version. The images, that were chosen from the Swedish translation of the movie, were replaced in cronological order, one frame per illustration, and through this a completely new expression and a new work is created.

−As sure as fate.
−He who lives will see.
−Sour grapes, said the fox.
Three lines from “He Dies at the End”, an animation based upon three meetings between a man and a woman. The dialogue and plot are created almost entirely out of well−known sayings and cliches. The film is balancing the empty words against the content of the pictures, and makes through this a unique context, where recognition and surprises play major parts. Samuel Dahlberg wrote this in the magazine Space #2 (March, 2000): “The video is a contribution to the indefatigable debate about originality. It can be put against our lifelong stribe for variation and renewal, and not to repeat the already said and done in a world thirsty for news, our fear to be judged, packaged and squeezed into a line.”