LOVING BELINDA, 2006-15
Works in the project: Adopting Belinda (single channel video, 8:50 min. Color. 2006), Revisiting the Andersons (single channel video, Color. 12:14 min. 2015), The Andersons (color photograph, 93,3 x 142 cm. 2015), Loving Belinda: (single channel video. Color. 9:29 min. 2015), Loving Belinda (Artist book, 180 pages, ill. Color. Published by forlaget *[asterisk]).
The Loving Belinda project began in 2006 with the video Adopting Belinda in which Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, a supposedly Asian-American couple in Minnesota, are being interviewed by a Danish TV host for a series on Danish heritage because they have just adopted Belinda, a white girl from Denmark. Everything appears ordinary with the exception that the racial and cultural dynamics are reversed.
The Loving Belinda Project employs the mockumentary genre, appropriating documentary features to destabilize reality with subversive effect. By staging and reversing the racial “order” within transnational adoption, the works expose some of the uneven economic, racial, and cultural relations of power that are embedded within the practice but that tend to remain unspoken.
The videos Revisiting the Andersons and Loving Belinda as well as the photograph The Andersons from 2015, portray how the family is coping now whenBelinda is nine years old in the midst of changing discourses around transnational adoption.
In the Loving Belinda publication, the fictional universe is contextualized by conversations between the individuals involved in the project, whom in reality are all engaged in critical discourse around transnational adoption, anti-racism and whiteness in Scandinavia.
The Andersons
Color photograph, 93,3 x 142 cm. 2015
Video excerpts from Adopting Belinda (2006), Revisiting the Andersons (2015), Loving Belinda (2015)
Adopting Belinda
Single channel video, color. 8:50 min. 2006
Concept, editing: Jane Jin Kaisen / Cast: Belinda: Elke Olaf Goll; Danish TV Host: Morten Goll; Mr. Anderson: Tobias Hübinette; Mrs Anderson: Jane Jin Kaisen / Camera: Tone Olaf Nielsen, Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld / Supported by: Kuratorisk Aktion, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, Sleipnir Travel Grant.
Revisiting the Andersons
Single channel video, color. 12:14 min. 2015
Concept, editing: Jane Jin Kaisen / Cast: Belinda: Elke Olaf Goll; Danish TV Host: Morten Goll; Mr. Anderson: Tobias Hübinette; Mrs Anderson: Jane Jin Kaisen / Photography & color correction: Guston Sondin-Kung / Supported by: The Danish Arts Foundation
Loving Belinda
Single channel video, color. 09:29 min. 2015
Concept, editing: Jane Jin Kaisen / Cast: Belinda: Elke Olaf Goll; Danish Adoption Researcher: Lene Myong; Mr. Anderson: Tobias Hübinette; Mrs Anderson: Jane Jin Kaisen / Photography & color correction: Guston Sondin-Kung / Supported by: The Danish Arts Foundation
Loving Belinda publication
Artist book, 180 pages, ill. Color, 2015
Published by forlaget *[asterisk] in collaboration with Galleri Image in conjunction with Jane Jin Kaisen's solo exhibition Loving Belinda, January 9 – March 8, 2015