grimaces reflected
Brick-one, Tokyo, 2002.
With all the inadequacy to consult metaphorics for assertions, one can imagine the whole thing as a domino effect. A field with rows of placed dominoes emerges here just as acts of communication represent working units - the smallest unit of social connections. It only requires the tipping of a single domino in order to set the series in motion: I approached various individuals in order to have them pose for a mirror session. As an edition, the participants should each bring with them a quote from another communication context, again evoking communication. In my studio in Vienna, further interactions developed between people; with the mirror and films and other impressions. The mirror images of the participants were recorded on video together with a film projection in the background. These recordings are chronologically compiled on tape and presented publicly in a 24-hour loop.
For two days of a 24HourVideoProjection at the Museum of Modern Art in the Museumsquartier in Vienna, various participants of the mirror sessions - the working units of the project - reenacted their sitting quasi face to face for each other and for the visitors. In the realization of the project, the I had a certain control over context, but absolutely no control over the communication process.
If the participants of the mirror sessions in my studio were told just to gaze at the uncertainty behind the mirror landscape, wanted the performers at the videoinstallation in Brick-one to make grimaces during sitting in front of a mirror in which the videoprojection, the result of the mirror sessions in my studio, was reflected.
Each performer at the Brick-one got recorded by a videocamera during making grimaces and was hereby becoming a participant of the significant game, which was set in motion by the artist/intervener as a communicative act. At the same time the Grimace Performers have been projected life onto a big videoscreen, which was part of the installation.
In the context of selected 'landscapes', I consistently develop observational arrangements in order to start operations of 'reflexive communication'. And again, as well in Brick-one, I released the communication process deliberately to an incalculable risk.
© 2012 Toni Kleinlercher
