Still from Siri Hammarén’s Is to see, to see, look (2023).

Harstad Kino, screen 2.

The film program Doublet consists of four short films by Siri Hammarén, Patty Chang, and Gunvor Nelson. In their own distinct ways, the films explore how repetition and translation shape our language and our understanding of it. In the films, language moves between the meaning of words and their delivery.

The voice sometimes appears as something independent or external to the body – a kind of autonomous agent that has taken residence within us. Patty Chang’s Rather to Potenitalities, Part 1 (2009) features excerpts from films that were re-recorded to make them available in languages other than the film’s original language. These films take on a different character, yet the voice remains connected to the body to which it belongs.

Anyone who has tried to learn a new language knows it’s a challenging and vulnerable experience. You can feel like a different person. Speaking can be challenging – things can be misunderstood, or the words that come out of your mouth might come out wrong. On the other hand, teaching someone a language requires both patience and consideration. Translations and attempts to be understood are expressed through gestures around a table in Siri Hammarén’s Is to see, to see, look (2023).

Repetition can be used to emphasize something, but if the repetition is repeated several times, the content may end up seeming abstract or disappearing, as in Nelson’s My Name is Oona (1969) At other times, repetition can create ambivalent shifts between what is told and what is re-told in a different language. In Siri Hammarén’s film Du sagst, dass du auf der Party bleibst, weil es dir Spaß macht (You Say That You’re Staying at the Party Because You’re Having Fun) (2026), the voice is examined as a carrier of testimony. Translated and interpreted by the judicial system, the words drift away from the narrator and become an echo of the events being recounted.

Following the screening, the artist Siri Hammarén will engage in a conversation about her films with curators and artists Tandi Reason Dahl and Johanne Edvarda.

Still from Siri Hammarén’s film Du sagst, dass du auf der Party bleibst, weil es dir Spaß macht (You Say That You’re Staying at the Party Because You’re Having Fun) (2026)