In this project, Johanna Adebäck (Stockholm, 1982) and Merve Ertufan try to define and challenge their relationship, as friends and colleagues. They experiment by assuming different positions, including rivalry, using games as tools for scrutiny. The games’ competitive nature discloses hidden structures within interpersonal relationships. As they compare and compete in strength, endurance, knowledge, and courage, they find underlying questions about power, culture, identity and borders.
Repeaters is part of the collaborative project me | you. Exhibited on two separate screens simultaneously, Johanna and Merve play a game in which one talks and the other repeats. They imitate and exaggerate what each other says and how she says it, in order to irritate one another. Johanna speaks in Swedish, Merve in Turkish. Neither understands what the other says; the conversation is revealed with the subtitles.
