Interrogation

Installations

Installations

INSTALLATION

CHERYL HAINES GALLERY, COUNTERSPACE PROJECT, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1995

The site is in an office building at Grant Street and Geary Boulevard in downtown San Francisco.  The space was a former observation room for a defunct marketing agency.  There were two rooms:  A sound-proof observation area where one could look into the “testing” room, presumably to watch persons be interviewed or test products.


The viewer of the work opened either door to the observation room (the testing room was locked). There, one could stand at the two-way mirror.  In the observation room was a black and white video camera pointed at the viewer’s back, facing the the window.  A video projector placed an circular image of  the viewer (reversed right-to-left) on the opposite wall of the testing room.  One could see oneself looking.


On a small table facing the mirror was a silhouette of a human figure, made out of mirror.  The lights were balanced in such a way that the mirror only reflected itself in itself and the viewer was invisible. Alignments created an endless, repeating image of the mirrored figure and itself.  The reflection of the viewer was dependent on focusing on the glass or seeing around the figure to watch themselves in a hazy, obtuse mirroring of their backs.


The work created a situation where looking was problematic and the presence of the viewer alternately created the piece and was invisible within it.

Observation window
Observation window
Mirrored figure in observation window
Mirrored figure in observation window