SUBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR 

video installation, loop duration approx. 14.30 min. /Hi8 transferred to DVD,

2 rear projections (face-to-face), 2 DVD player, 2 screens, dimensions variable

The modified title – instead of “Objects in mirror...” is “Subjects in mirror...” – is borrowed from a driving mirror and indicates the subject-object topic. Location of the scene is a bathroom, static camera directly behind the mirror. In the installation the viewer stands between two back lit screens. One screen shows the original, the other the mirrored video. In front of the mirror the artist starts to paint his face white, goes on using eyeliner and lipstick. As he is doing his make-up, he becomes similar to a pantomime, a clown and ends up in a baroque figure. The masquerade is disrupted several times by his suspicious views at his mirror image. The reversal point is the hysterical removing the make up and the following attempt to write the word ich (me) on his forehead, what fails. The contrast between inner and outside image, the me-difference – as described by Lacan- is tried to dissolve by adopting this mimetic figures. The clown/pantomime is damned to fail by becoming an incorporation of self-mimesis. Within the baroque figure he strives not only to uniform himself but also to level gender. Realising his condition he tries to locate himself on one side of the mirror – using his ratio. But he doesn’t succeed to write the letters in right order of reflection. He ends up although this is, at least visually, the closest reconciliation of both images. Using two players creates a little time shifting, so the viewer never knows what is happening really in his back when he looks to one screen. Standing between the screens, not realising what is original, what is the mirror, the viewer himself becomes the function of mirror the figure is reflecting.