Ten Days With An Exorcist
Line Kallmayer
The book is written in English and its narrator is a young woman who travels to Rome to meet a well reknowned Catholic priest and exorcist. The pairs relationship develops as they share their most intimate and innermost thoughts and it leads the reader to question whether the invisible border of Catholic acceptability has been crossed.
Ten Days With An Exorcist investigates the power and requirements of religion in a modern society through the eyes of a modern western woman. It is a portrayal of human emotions, a role and an investigation of what we call reality.
Ten Days With An Exorcist is based on the artist Line Kallmayer’s own encounter with a Catholic exorcist in Rome, Christmas 2011, and chronicles their meetings and walks through the streets of the ancient city.
Ten Days With An Exorcist investigates the power and requirements of religion in a modern society through the eyes of a modern western woman. It is a portrayal of human emotions, a role and an investigation of what we call reality.
Ten Days With An Exorcist is based on the artist Line Kallmayer’s own encounter with a Catholic exorcist in Rome, Christmas 2011, and chronicles their meetings and walks through the streets of the ancient city.
“Dear Drew, I have seen him. Sitting in a mellow basement room with translucent curtains drawn in front of double windowed doors leading to an outside terrace. In front of him is a great, shiny black grand piano that he does not touch. He has no stool. He is positioned on the carpeted floor with his back turned to me. Next to him, there is an animal of some sort. It may be a dog. I notice his legs. They are not right. They are non-functional pieces of human tissue pointing in opposite directions like exposed beams. Twisted, you know, as if he is doing the splits. His legs must be numb, passive. His gaze is downwards. The piano is open, but no one is playing it. He is lean, short with grey hair and strongly built. Sixty to seventy years old, I would guess. His eyes. They are black. He wears white or light clothes, light summer clothes. I am standing at the open doorway, observing him, and he knows I am there. He sees me. He sends me thoughts. He wants me to do something for him. Something unbearable. Every time the thought enters me, I levitate from the ground and feel the power of his temptation; his will, my will. When I let him. When I accept. But I fight it. I fight and every time, I slowly come back to the ground, slowly. It goes on for a while. I don’t know why it is so hard to resist, I know how wrong it is. I still cannot conceive of the terror of what he is proposing.”
Extract from Ten Days With An Exorcist, page 7.
Line Kallmayer (b. 1976, DK) is a graduate from Goldsmiths and The Polish National Film School. She has previously exhibited in e.g. Italy, England, Denmark and Japan. Her practice unfolds in an interdisciplinary field where photography, video and text are integrated by methods derived from ethnography and visual anthropology.
Her work explores perception and experience and uses storytelling as a tool to examine means of graspingand understanding. Ten Days with an Exorcist is her first book publication. Previous work includes the two films, Dennis a monodrama and Hanging Tree, both published on DVD in 2010.
www.linekallmayer.dk
Her work explores perception and experience and uses storytelling as a tool to examine means of graspingand understanding. Ten Days with an Exorcist is her first book publication. Previous work includes the two films, Dennis a monodrama and Hanging Tree, both published on DVD in 2010.
www.linekallmayer.dk
Press:
May 2013: Interview by Torben Zenth with Line Kallmayer on Kopenhagen Magasin
June 2013: Review by Karen Benedicte Busk-Jepsen on Turn On Art
June 2013: Review by Karen Benedicte Busk-Jepsen on Turn On Art