When Ali Joof invites Gitte Villesen and her cameraman to join him in milking his cows in his village in the Gambian countryside, the presence of the filmmaker alters the everyday quality of the situation, revealing a playful interaction between the participants (Gido, 20 Min., 2014). In the Wolof language, the word “Gido“ denotes a particular form of friendship, aptly describing the relationship between Ali and his friend, the Gambian musician Amadou Sarr.

In Gitte Villesen’s video and photo installation deeply immersed in the contents of a learning stone (28:20 min., 2016), a narrative of the transcendence of states of consciousness unfolds. In conversations with Emma Haugh, alongside feminist sci-fi literature and material on Katharina Detzel, Franz Kockartz and Oskar Voll from the Prinzhorn Collection in Heidelberg, the work traces several concepts, gender constructions and power dynamics at the intersections of different worlds.

The photo installation I stick my hands into the earth, and I think for a while (2017), which exists also in the form of a publication, is an arranged collection of materials from Gitte’s artistic practice. Many of the images depict fragments and also present themselves as fragments; as such they are open to interconnection on a narrative or a documentary level. This can be seen as a not-as-yet as well as an already-underway: a narrative with an open beginning and ending. It remains in motion, the juxtaposition of the two images in effect placing them along a line that both divides and connects.