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Choreographer and director, video and stage Monica Emilie Herstad

"This table turning of obsessions is to suggests that we, as observers, are more profoundly important then that which we view

In a time of obsessive watching and publicly acceptable voyeuristic desires it is the observer, not the observed that become important

What the title The Fetish is the Observer eludes to is an obsession regarding the one who is obsessed, or a gaze returned to the watcher from a third party, a third set of viewers

The trend of watching, peeping or monitoring is nothing new, nor is the pathology that is attributed to the distanced viewer watching an outside reality infold; we all become the audience in Hitchcock's ´rear window´, watching, the watcher

The cultural plague of obsessive voyeuristic manners is not as empty as one may first consider, the process of watching is not as passive as the immersion that takes place at the mercy of fiction

The culture that observes does so with a desire to view a reality, a narrative, or story in real life drama or mundane happenings

When we focus on the observer we find a rich wealth of cultural information, most importantly the viewers need to watch a reality that does not threaten their own identity by ways of idealizing the everyday"

These thougts on choreographer Monica Emilie Herstad´s issue The fetish is the observer is here presented by LA artist, art professor Charlie White, May 2002

The Fetish is the observer is above all about the innoscence in being the observed.

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The fetish is the observer is earlier exposed at:

Oslo Open 29th of August 2003

Demokrati og maktutredningens Nordic conference on Gender and power, in co-operation with Kilden, Norges Forskningsråd at Blindern, UiO, 12th of June 2003

Black Box Teater, 6.-9.February 2003

Kaiiteater in Brüssels, November 26th at Nordisk mønstring, 2002

Beograd, CENPI, 24th of October 2003

Bergen Kunsthall, Mainvideo in Landmark Café in October at Oktoberdans/BIT, 2002

Oslo Kunsthall, 28th and 29th June 2002 performance and video

Monica Emilie Herstad unner omfattende konsentrasjon til hver enkelt kunstproduksjon, som koreograf, regissør, scenograf, videoregissør, lysdesigner, og først og fremst danser. Så er de da også i en sjelden grad gjennomarbeidet, preget av en perfeksjonisme som gjør henne til en av vår tids fremste stilister innen kontemporær performance

"(...) Meget diskré i et hjørne hersker en DJ med sitt utstyr. Han skaper lange, behagelige lydbilder til den som er på scenen, og han er med til og drive frem atmosfæren som svinger fra det kjøligste til de hurtigste hjerteslag(…)”
-Aftenposten