Me and My Mother (2000, 2005, 2010) is a series of videos by the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976), to which he intends to add an instalment every five years. The first three videos have already been made and show Kjartansson and his mother, the prominent Icelandic actress Gudrún Ásmundsdóttir, standing in front of the family bookshelf as the artist's mother repeatedly spits on him.

The series is an unsettling disruption of the relationship between actor and character: the spitting character is a professional actress following direction and a mother who is debasing her son. In the context of the small arts community of Iceland, the videos rely on recognition of the famous actress and the common knowledge that Ásmundsdóttir is an energetic champion of her son. Ásmundsdóttir is recognized as acting out of character because she is generally perceived to be a good mother; on the other hand, she is in character because, by acting the role of ‘bad’ mother, she is supporting her son in his artistic efforts.

The fascination of theatre resides in the doubling of the actor's body, both a fictional character and a physical presence. As Philip Auslander puts it: ‘The performing body is always doubly encoded – it is defined by the codes of a particular performance, but has always already been inscribed, in its material aspect, by social discourses (e.g. science, medicine, hygiene, law, etc.)’ (2006: 90). Me and My Mother tests the doubleness of the performing body. Not only is Ásmundsdóttir the ‘mother of the actor’ as well as the ‘mother of the actor's character’, her performance also challenges ideologies of the maternal body. Because the performance is repeated at five-year intervals, each enactment resounds with the history of previous enactments and anticipates future instalments. Viewers note the aging of the performers along with the increased technological sophistication of the artist. Even the first performance is now experienced through the lens of subsequent performances, since all three works are exhibited together.

What Jon Erickson has called ‘the incorrigible frisson of sign and body’ (1995: 62) animates theatrical performance and is particularly striking in Kjartansson's series.