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Location: Chicago, IL

Website: www.consideredtobeallies.com

Mie Frederikke Fischer Christensen

My work emerges from a interest in the way film, TV and pop culture reinforce social constructs such as the relations between women, objectification, violence and power.
Installations reminiscent of the set designs that stay in the background in dramas and comedies are brought to the forefront and become the basis for social commentary. Real life, risk and ephemerality is added to the safe, never changing, staged environment. I build build sets and environment that seem controlled and untouchable – celebrating specific aesthetics; femininity, beauty, film and art history. By using uncontrollable materials I hope to challenge myself as well as my audience and to invite people to break the structures or create new ones. 
In my work I am search for the balance between restraint and release hope to make the drama and the theatrical a catalyst for change while I´m also simply enjoying the playfulness of materials and the tensity between chance and purpose. My work often takes on a personal

Well Now, it Looks As if You are Armed For Battle

Well Now it Looks as if You are Armed for Battle

Installation: Wood, foam, clay, sugar and others Performance, 7-10 min 2015 —

An installation that is activated and gradually altered by the performers in the space. Through an investigation into the power relationship between women in film and popular culture and the clichés surrounding female confrontation, a vocabulary of the “catfight” has been developed and reshaped into a choreography with a corresponding interior environment. The passive pastels reflect the simmering passive aggression within the two performer, while the architecture of the space enable and anticipates the outburst ́s of violence between them.

Prologue

Prologue

Film, 2 min loop, 2014, reedit 2016.

This film was not only the starting point of our research for the following installation and performance “Well Now it Looks as if You are Armed for Battle” it was also our very first collaboration and set the tone for our practice as a duo. Not knowing what the project would eventually lead to, we started out “reenacting” a famous catfight-scene from the soap opera “Dynasty”. After re-filming the scene shot by shot, the project changed shape in the editing room where we cut the film down to the speechless dialogue between the two women. Communicating only by intense, aggressive stares, their sleek contoured mask´s doesn’t hide the exertion of every muscle in their face. Their faces are carved with the obviousness of their role, as they both express to excess their woman to woman drama without ever revealing any reason or logic behind their wordless struggle.

Show Her Romance, is Not a Dead Language

Show Her Romance is not a Dead Language

Installation, 2016

Textils, mirrors, wood, silicone, found objects, audio loop and a text by Joshua Roginsky Set in a shop window, this installation explores the gendered marketing of romance both within contemporary consumer culture and classic pop culture. Romantic and charming hollywood scenes from famous films like Titanic, Pretty Woman, and Breakfast at Tiffany´s, are selling the idea of the gifted jewellery as gesture of love, rather than a announcement of ownership and demands of commitment. Displaying arms, hands, necks and fingers, cut off from the rest of the body. Twisted, shrunk or extended to provide a more elegant podium for diamond rings and pearl necklaces. The sparkling decadence directs our eyes and distracts us from the strange architecture carrying their weight. The monochrome objects that blend in with the velvety backdrop is here brought forward investigating the tension between romance and violence, and showing us the co