When you fall into a trance (2014)

The film When You Fall into a Trance shows the complex relationship between Dominique, a neuroscientist, and Simon, her patient, Tony, a synchronised swimmer, and Hugo, a care worker. Simon suffers from impaired proprioception or position sense, i.e. the neuro-motor capacity to perceive the position of one’s own body. According to neuroscientists, the perception of one’s own body is of essential importance to a human being. So long as Simon is unable to truly perceive his body, he loses control over his bodily movements and with this his balance. Dominique’s fascination for the complexity of this body-mind relationship eventually starts to overshadow her work and personal life. When You Fall into a Trance places the viewer and the protagonists in continual uncertainty. The film is about the undermining and misleading of other people. As the bodies of the protagonists in the film appear to relax the dialogues between them become all the more complex. 

Emily Wardill’s films deconstruct their own visual language. Reoccurring themes in her work are the complexities of communication and representation, the limitations and inexactitudes of language, and the natural relationship between language and human imagination. Wardill tends towards a historical and intellectual approach to her subjects. She usually chooses to work with a form that has been described as ‘restless’. In this way the form and content merge together. Her work is exhibited internationally and has previously been shown at La Loge, Brussels; de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; 54^th Biennale in Venice, and the 19^th Biennale in Sydney. Wardill is represented by the gallery Standard in Oslo.