Title: State of Mind
Artists: Annica Karlsson Rixon & Anna Viola Hallberg
Media: Installation, 11 color photographs (c-prints), seven monitors (sd) and one projection (hd) with sound (stereo).
Duration: 7 x 35 min of interviews, running independently (7 loops), 1 x 30 min backdrop (loop)
Voice: Russian, English, Swedish
Subtitles: English & Russian
Original installation: 65 square meters, black box video installation + wall space for 11 large format photographs.
Production year: 2008 (2006-2008)

State of Mind
The foundation of the work is captured in personal stories and group portraits. The artists have been collaborating with organizations, activists and select individuals in St Petersburg during returning visits 2006-2008.

State of Mind introduces a discussion of intercultural perspectives to identity politics. The stories are selected from documentary material collected in great trust between the artists and the interviewees in fieldwork. Leadership, democracy and human rights are central matters.

On seven monitors all together 39 people personally talk about life in St Petersburg addressing LGBTQ issues, East-West, private situations and confrontations, and the view of the future. They span in age from 17-67 and include students, journalists, psychologists, pole dancers, physicians, office workers, drivers, poets, lawyers, academics, business owners, rock stars, house wives etcetera. The video installation is constructed as a group portrait with a projection of the Neva River as a backdrop. In the large format photographs friends and families gather at different sites in St Petersburg. The audio is based on documentary elements shaped into a ambient sound piece of the city.


(Installation views, Art Arsenal/Gogol Fest 09, Kiev, Ukraine)


Lezzie Think Tank and Leaving Your Traces
State of Mind also travels with two formats carried out by the artist in addition to the traditional artist talks also performed at each venue. The other are two workshops done with the local activists and academic communities; Lezzie Think Tank a relay of questions pass on from one city to the next and Leaving Your Traces new video segments from each city based on a set of questions designed to give a notion of the everyday life for an LGBTQ person in that specific city.