Annika’s dramatic natural birth

After reading the task brief, Annika’s first idea, worryingly, is to set the nearby forest on fire.

She ultimately decides to interpret ‘entrance’ a bit more loosely, though – instead of a literal entrance, Annika films a birth.

However, while everyone present in the studio agrees that childbirth is one of the most magical – and dramatic – events in the world, Mark insists that there can still be exceptions to every rule, and that all viewer complaints should be forwarded directly to Annika.

In a wooded area of the garden, Mark lies in a bathtub with his legs spread wide, wearing a long brown wig and a panda mask (similar to Melvin Kakooza’s ‘Fruit panda’ mask from the ‘Make the best invention’ task, if not the exact same one). Behind Mark, a barrel fire burns, and a production assistant holds up a running hose.

Annika – who is hiding in the bathtub beneath Mark – says the required phrase, and then tells Mark to start birthing her.

Mark screams and grunts while the camera shakes, and Annika emerges from between his legs, dressed in a green screen morph suit, a blue safety jacket, yellow braids, a crown, and a white face mask. She awkwardly rolls out of the tub and tells Mark that she’s finished.

In the studio, Lasse admits that he has more questions for her about her work than he had for Sofie about hers. Annika counters by reminding him that, during her season, he had said that if one has to ask about an art piece’s meaning, then one is too stupid to understand it.

However, Annika does explain that she was working with all four elementals (air, water, earth, and fire), and that she had hoped that the crown would bring Hamlet to mind, which she considers to be the most dramatic work of fiction in existence.

As Annika becomes more passionate in her explanation, Christian rhetorically asks for clarification: art can be explained as long as no one actually asks about its meaning?

For making something that he found more weird than dramatic, Lasse awards Annika third place.

(Written by Jenny R and proofread by Karl Craven)

(Illustrations collected by Jenny R and adjusted by Karl Craven)