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art film

Blood sisters

Video work by Helen Anna Flanagan & Josefin Arnell

Four white women are pictured in a garden. Three are standing up and one is sitting in a wheelchair. They all wear floral dresses. A woman is sitting on her knees, drinking alcohol from a bottle. She is surrounded by legs of other people in floral dresses. The picture shows the lower part of an older white woman's face and a white hand, whose index finger she is sucking. Her lips are painted pink. A white woman is shown sitting in a wheelchair. She has sunglasses in her hair and wears a long, brown dress that is pulled up to show one leg. On this bare leg lies a half-peeled banana.

Blood Sisters (2020), 4K video, 1’00 excerpt (original 11’00)


“Blood Sisters” is a collaborative video work by Helen Anna Flanagan and Josefin Arnell in Groningen, Netherlands. The location was used as a site to research into the active student fraternities present in the city. They were particularly drawn to the traditional hazing rituals, using them as a loose starting point to create a fictional initiation ceremony for four older females. Hazing rituals often involve forcing new members into humiliating acts and is a technique used by the fraternities to strengthen group cohesion and identity. The work took an interest in these rituals and a number of corresponding topics, including the abject physicality of a woman’s body, conformity, social pressure, age and agency. The work playfully explores power, humiliation and hierarchies in relation to fear in public space, focusing on shame as a way to control and manipulate behaviour.

Produced with Stichting SIGN (with the additional support of Research Group Image in Context Hanze UAS Groningen & DesignArbeid, Amsterdam)

https://www.helenannaflanagan.com

https://josefinarnell.se

https://www.helenannaflanagan.com

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