Sirens

Video Installation of 5 films / 2024
10 min looped / projected 200 x 148 cm
Twins with Animals / Satoko Monster / Yellow Satoko / Satoko Arms and Shapes / Shadi and Satoko with Masks

Featured videos:
> :21 sec excerpt (all 5 films)
> 1:45 min excerpt (video installation walk through in exhibition space, Fotografiska Shanghai, 2024)
* full-length piece shown in exhibition only

Created in conjunction with the exhibition Hysteria, SIRENS explores performance, transformation, and the mythic potential of the female body. Monumental in scale and spontaneously choreographed, the works depict a fictitious tribe of women suspended in various states of metamorphosis. Drawn from a library of gestures, rituals, and fragmented bodies, the artists construct a mythological dynasty shaped by the transformative powers of goddesses—figures of magic, power, vengeance, and enchantment.

The title SIRENS evokes layered meanings: a warning signal, a mythological creature, a seductive force. Here, the Sirens oscillate between protectors and provocateurs—wielding the supernatural while confronting archetypes of allure and danger. The ambiguity is deliberate: are they the threat, or the ones alerting us to it?

The soundscape amplifies this tension. Distant foghorns, domestic rhythms, and the exertion of dressing blend with glitch-like bursts from early video games—suggesting revival, ritual, and resistance.

Director: Cooper & Gorfer / DoP and editor: Conny Fridh / Composer: Per-Henrik Mäenpää / Colorist: Jesper Hammarbäck at Lush Retouch / Starring: Shadi Golchin, Mandana Shahoon, Mona Shahoon, Satoko Takahashi
* all footage was filmed in camera, without special effects

The Eternal Play

Video Installation / 2020
9:10 min looped / projected in 3-panels, 200 cm high

Featured videos:
> 2:15 min excerpt (main film)
> 3:30 min excerpt (3-panel installation installed in exhibition space / CODA Museum, 2024)
* full-length piece shown in exhibition only

Created in conjunction with the exhibition Between These Folded Walls, Utopia, THE ETERNAL PLAY captures the ongoing, dance-like struggle of Shadi Golchin–whose story is shaped by her Iranian refugee heritage–and four dancers from Gothenburg Dance Company. Acting as avatars of Shadi’s psyche, the women embody a mind in flux, shifting from ally to adversary.

Figures become sharply visible in moments of stillness, while in motion they dissolve into layered, ghost-like echoes of themselves—visualizing the fluidity and fragmentation of identity.

Based on interviews with Shadi, the film’s choreography moves beyond biography to express a universal tension: the internal push and pull we all experience between care and conflict, harmony and resistance. The body becomes both battleground and companion in this intimate dialogue.

Produced and directed by: Cooper & Gorfer / DoP: Camilla Topuntoli / VFX: Ulf Lundén / Music and Sound Design: Per-Henrik Mäenpää (incl. piano track Ceasefire by Peter Broderick) / based on original choreography by Dorotea Saykaly