two videos, each 5:00 minute loop

This video installation consists of two video frames facing each other. Both video loops show a hand, originating from the viewer’s position, that is smudging a layer of paint on a mirror, which is reflecting another person’s face. With the oily layer already being on the mirror and also additional black paint the hand is painting an abstract picture of a face using contures of the mirrored face behind. After a certain amount of thick paint the person whose mirror image we see is starting to interfere with the painting, too.

„Tabula Rasa“ is seizing on some of my previous works from 2011, revolving around the popular philosophical object-subject problem and theory that, if one’s perception is soley based on all previously collected and processed sensory impressions, to what degree one is able „to see“ another person, or even oneself for that matter.

stop-motion video, 2:00 minutes

photography & installation

„Perpetuum Mobile“ is a two-part work consisting of a small installation plus a photo series of three self-portraits. In reference to German Idealists, I was exploring the portrait – particularly the self-potrait – and its intention to authentically capture not only a physical appearance but also the portrait subject’s essence. Philosopher Hegel once defined the subject as „the unmoved with is also self-moving“, an unrest, to be characterized as „reflection in otherness withing itself“. However, definability and terminability needs a certain steadiness and tangibility, so: how is to capture and define something, terminological or as a picture, that only exists in movement and in another space?

exhibition view

*1986 in Filderstadt, Germany

www.sirasandberg.de