About the work, written by curator Dayun Ryu:

Both historiography and storytelling have never been objective. Prop People (2018) explores the politics of how and to whom agency is imparted within the narrative creation process. The narrator of the two-channel video installation is Princess Zelda who is a key figure in the background story of the video game The Legend of Zelda. However, in the game itself, her role is more akin to that of a non-playable character (NPC). Gjerding intervenes and breathes life into Zelda, plotting her escape from the game world. What happens when a protagonist is removed from their original context and placed in an entirely disparate milieu? Can a character “survive” outside of the hands of its storyteller? Despite Zelda’s monologue, shots of the virtual film set serve as reminders that her character development is limited to the boundaries of the camera frame. (...) In her fictitious runaway, Zelda ascertains, “If I am not found, I can stay an image. […] If I am not found, I will not be recognized.” Not being fully seen in the gaze of others engenders possibilities for the beginning of another story.

About the work, written by curator Iben Bach Elmstrøm:

Gjerding has created a total installation, where images collide physically in front of the viewer through two video projections, that uses older film-sets’ rear projection techniques. In the work, we face a number of props, animals, and characters that together form a surreal narrative, where reality is constantly exceeded through new virtual spaces.

In the work, we meet a recognizable hybrid creature that balances between being a lion and a dog. A fusion of two species on each side of Man: the dog symbolizes the domesticated animal that has evolved in line with human needs and the lion represents the wild beast. Gjerding has also worked in clay, producing different versions of the ‘Ocarina’, a whistling instrument that is thought to have been developed over 12,000 years ago and belongs to one of the oldest instrument families. The whistle has several symbolic meanings in the work and is linked to one of the characters, the figure Princess Zelda, originally a character from the video game ‘Legend of Zelda’. Gjerding has worked with how Zelda is a mix between a prop and a person and thus balances between being passive and active.

The work stimulates a range of unthinkable situations and linguistic fusions, such as a lively glass eye inserted in Zelda and the Lion Dog. The glass eye was originally a 3D rendering of a 1920s glass eye that was used for war veterans with facial injuries. By forcing different references, eras, and realities together, Gjerding dissolves the relationship between prop and individual, prosthesis and body, as well as surface and content.


CREDITS

Script, 3D animation, camera, editing:
Sophia Ioannou Gjerding
3D animation, dog/lion: Karsten Kjærulf-Hoop
CG Generalist, dog/lion: Lars Hemmingsen Nørgaard
Sound editing: William Kudahl
Music production, "Pigtails, pink nails, panic": Sara Tholander

Voice 1, Zelda: Aoife Slevin
Voice 2: Wendy Waggnorr
Ocarina melody: Johanne Buus Andersen

Thanks to:
Mini Tech
Aarhus Filmværksted
Bastian Leonhart Strube
Mark Tholander
Claus Rasmussen

The work has been supported by Open Workshop: Department of The Animation Workshop.