GARBAGE FOR THE GAP (2009)
In the video "Garbage for the Gap" the line between a performative act and a narrative (with protagonist) is intentionally blurred.
The imagery is from a series of walks in a straight line through the wildly different environs of New York City and the New Mexico Desert in which I wore a large convex mirror (typically used for catching shoplifters) on my back. The actual performance attempted to place the device used for surveillance (the security mirror) directly onto the surveyed subject and bounce the "information" back... producing a rupture in the visual landscape.
However, as the video documentation began, I soon realized that aside from obvious similarities between my situation and that of a viewer watching a video on a screen, there were also actually a set of opposing mirrors at play... the one on my back and the mirror of the camera lens itself.
Each of my steps forward (and away from the camera) placed a distorted image of what was left behind (the past steps) in both the mirror on my back and the mirror of the lens.
This visual convergence of past and present lead me to think of the nature of looking into a mirror... how it is always a confrontation with the present moment and a corporeal record of the past.
The imagery is from a series of walks in a straight line through the wildly different environs of New York City and the New Mexico Desert in which I wore a large convex mirror (typically used for catching shoplifters) on my back. The actual performance attempted to place the device used for surveillance (the security mirror) directly onto the surveyed subject and bounce the "information" back... producing a rupture in the visual landscape.
However, as the video documentation began, I soon realized that aside from obvious similarities between my situation and that of a viewer watching a video on a screen, there were also actually a set of opposing mirrors at play... the one on my back and the mirror of the camera lens itself.
Each of my steps forward (and away from the camera) placed a distorted image of what was left behind (the past steps) in both the mirror on my back and the mirror of the lens.
This visual convergence of past and present lead me to think of the nature of looking into a mirror... how it is always a confrontation with the present moment and a corporeal record of the past.
