You´ll never walk alone

HDV, two-channel videoinstallation, 6min loop 2009
 

We observe football supporters exiting the arena after the cupfinal at Ullevåll Stadion in Oslo, Norway. The game was played between Aalesund FK and Molde FK, both teams representing small communities on the westcoast in Mid-Norway. Although a passive and static observer, the camera demands a central role in this video piece as it physically confronts its subjects of observation. The supporters reactions to the cameras presence generate the narrative and demonstrate how success is paramount to generating the collective feeling of unity.

Komposisjoner i rødt, hvitt og blått
 

2010, HDV, two-channel videoinstallation, 07:14min loop

In this communal project the individual constitutes a part of a larger whole and the projects success rests on each person’s ability to adapt to the rest of the group. As the group’s common objectives comes up against the individual, we can glimpse the underlying power structures. The recordings are from the Landsturnstevnet 2009, Kristiansand (National Gymnastics Meeting).

Komposisjoner i rødt, hvitt og blått was shown at the Norwegian Short Film Festival 2010 in the program White Cube-Dark Space curated by Susanne Østbye Sæther

In Solidum

HDV, 9min, 2010

Toft's videos show a different kind of crowd, created for different reasons by different forces. We see groups of people in the city and in the countryside, but it somehow seems that the countryside, however snowy and desolate, is not unlike the city, just as leisure is not unlike work. What looks at first glance like smooth, concerted activity seems hesitant and fragmented on closer examination. The extended, unbroken takes begin to reveal change rather than repetition, temporary congruences rather than static truths. Despite the initial conveyor-belt sense of the rhythms of industrial society, this is not organised labour, but a typology of post-industrial collectivity and its ideological language. Still, something is being produced in these scenes, or reproduced. Is it a sense of community, a social bond? Is it comfort, or conformity? Or is it, perhaps, the social order itself?

excerpt from " And We Are All Together" by Will Bradley 

In Solidum was first shown at the MA Degree Show at Stenersen Museum and have also been shown at the International Video Art Festival of Camaguey 2013, Cuba and at MK Gallery, London for video space Who controls the controller?  in relation to Pushwagner Soft City and at Frappant, Hamburg for the exhibition Vis-aVis#3