The visitor enters a small corridor between a projection screen and a dull mirror surface. The initial projection is of the empty environment of the exhibition room, but then strange scenarios begin to develop. Live images from the installation are mixed with recor­dings of enacted scenes and short film clips are faded in. The activation, speed and sequence of these overlapping elements depend on how the visitor behaves. Control is an end in itself in a society geared to control. If it is pushed to extremes it becomes a threat and at the same time its loss engenders fear. Hermen Maat’s panopticum addres­ ses this paradox. Like in a play for the theatre which takes up the fate of Narcissus and the nymph, Echo, he sends the visitor into a labyrinth of conditions and states of mind. The visitor, who is observer and under observation atone and the same time, moves like a picture puzzle between the projected scenes, which apparently take on an independent existence, and his own countenance. What might develop in this situation, however, is a matter for speculation. As soon as the mirror reflects a clear image, the abrupt end is like inevitable death after you have looked in narcissistic fashion at your own image.
Video actress: Viviane de Muynck
Text quotations from ‘An Echo Play” by Alfred Kreijemborg, 1923.