Seven minute video loop with sound, 2009.

The video 7x7 (2008) is based on material shot outdoors in the east highland of Iceland. Sigurdsson organised a performance of forty-nine men, dressed in orange work overalls with hoods on, standing in a grid in the winter landscape. A simple synchronized choreography with the group shifting the body weight from one foot to the next is sustained by a rhythmical soundtrack by Steingrimur E. Gudmundsson.

It progresses from the ambient sound of stamping in the snow to a digital beat. For the most part the camera is positioned in the midst of the group, displaying close-ups of the backs of the moving men.

The orange attire fills the screen so that there is little or no figurative image to hold on to. Occasionally there is a wide crane shot displaying the whole scene. Still, the viewer never sees the individual performers; this anonymous mass of men is only seen from behind. The work emerges out of a local discourse on the largest single construction project in the history of Iceland, a hydro electric power plant that required hundreds of foreign guest workers to stay in the barren highlands for extended periods of time. The overtly futile, yet strictly organised ritual, reflects a shift in man’s relationship to nature. The solitary experience of the romantic individual, a classic subject in art history, is replaced by the impassiveness of the homogeneous group. The work has been displayed in different ways, always as a large-scale projection but with different mirroring devices in the space, so that the image is multiplied.

Butchers’ Duel (2009) is a single screen video projection displaying a mirrored image that was actually shot simultaneously from two opposite sides and then juxtaposed. In a black space we see Sigurdsson dressed in the custom gear of a butcher, posing awkwardly with one hand extended holding a knife and the other latching onto a meat hook. His position exceeds all logic as the image is tilted. The juxtaposition of the two angles makes him appear to be confronting himself with the knife and as he strains to keep the pose, the two blades seem to be just about to touch all the time – but they never do. The video shifts between a wide angle, displaying the artist suspended in the air, and a close up of the tip of the unsteady knife. The symmetrical image is loaded with tension, underlined by an eerie soundtrack, composed by musician Ragnhildur Gisladottir. The piece was commissioned for an exhibition in an abandoned slaughterhouse in a town in the east of Iceland.