ART & FILM PROJECTS
THE SWIMMER
Documentary Feature · In Post-production
Sara Jordenö · Writer & Director
The Swimmer is a hybrid feature documentary emerging out of exchanges between Jordenö and Arash, a young Afghan Hazara refugee. Jordenö first met Arash in Sweden in 2016 while conducting research for Outside/In. Seven years later, somewhere in Europe, he disappears. He stops answering messages, and his phone is disconnected.
What begins with Arash’s story and disappearance opens into an examination of a wider condition produced by the asylum and deportation system, where people seeking asylum are required to tell their stories over and over again without the telling bringing them any closer to refuge.
Years of recordings are translated into performance. Actor Ahmad Maher becomes the filmmaker’s conversation partner in an “as if” space, where memory, testimony, and negotiation remain active after the film’s central participant is no longer there. Through a “useful fiction,” the interrupted exchange is allowed to continue. But the fiction begins to speak back. It is no longer obedient, challenging the filmmaker and the terms on which the story can be told.
CIVIL SOCIETY
Film · Video + Super 16mm · 22 min · 2019–2025
Sara Jordenö · Writer & Director
Developed alongside the Civil Society research study, the film follows the networks that formed around young refugees facing deportation in Sweden. Through encounters with teachers, advocates, families, and volunteers, it examines how ordinary people became involved in responding to an increasingly restrictive asylum system.
Edstrandska Award Show
Inter Arts Center, Malmö · 2019
Curator: Åsa Nacking
PRECARIOUS RECORD
Four-channel Video Installation · 2014–18
Sara Jordenö + A. Horning
Precarious Record brings testimony from unaccompanied young refugees into a four-channel installation examining asylum, legal uncertainty, and the conditions produced by the Swedish migration system. The work places individual accounts alongside the institutional processes through which those accounts are repeatedly assessed and interpreted.
With the Future Behind Us
Moderna Museet, Stockholm · 2018
Curators: Joa Ljungberg + Santiago Mostyn
MODERNA MUSEET →
NYC MAPS
Mapping + Animation · 2012
Sara Jordenö + A. Horning
A visual research project using collaborative mapping and animation to examine movement, sex markets, urban space, and adjacent informal economies across New York City. Maps produced through interviews become records of movement, work, relationships, and the ways people navigate the city.
Matter Out of Place
The Kitchen, New York · 2012
Curated by Lumi Tan
