Pull the skin of the body as a pullover (2007)

Solo show at Galleri Mellanrummet, Royal Institute of Fine Art, Stockholm
Installation, performance.

Can we one day design a machine that is indistinguishable from the animal?
This is the question that drove René Descartes, four hundred years ago to his widely influentail Animal-Machine hypothesis. This ethological hypothesis claimed that animals like other machines, were assemblages of parts and as such rejected the idea that animals could have conscience or were even able to think. Nicolas Malebranche took this idea a step further claiming that the cries and groans of this animal-machine point to its mechanical failures (of its “cogwheels”) rather than to its joy or sorrow.
To embody a promise of disturbances and change Kjellmark moved her studio into the gallery space. People could watch her working there from above. Every day she did one performance with her group of animal-machines. Kjellmark gave herself the task to keep them inside a marked square on the floor as long as she endured.