Performance and Stage-Set Utilizing Two-Way Mirror and Video Time Delay, 1983
45 min 50 s, Betacam numérique PAL, noir et blanc, son
For his exhibition “Pavilions” at the Kunsthalle in Bern in 1983, Dan Graham created a work in which visitors were confronted by their own image, thereby reversing the roles customarily assigned to the public and the performer. The artist and theorist had already begun producing his "pavilions" in the late 1970s; he installed these geometric sculptures made of transparent glass in public spaces to question the role of art in each context by deliberately blurring the boundary between sculpture and architecture by creating a dialogue between the viewer and the surrounding landscape. For the installation in his 1983 exhibition, Graham invited three musicians—Glenn Branca, Margaret Dewys and Axel Gross—to activate the artwork by giving a musical performance. The audience was seated on the right and the musicians on the left, both facing (and observing each other through) a large two-way mirror. A video screen—bright enough to be seen through the two-way mirror—showed a wide-angle view of the room with a six-second time-delay captured by a camera positioned above the television. In this context, the public was no longer able to directly identify with the musicians as they were faced by their own reflection. And when the musicians looked toward the mirror image to see the other musicians for cues, or to the six-second time-delayed image on the video, they saw the view of the audience positioned between their intersubjective gazes. Performance and Stage-Set Utilizing Two-Way Mirror and Video Time Delay inspired a sound composition—Acoustic Phenomena—of which a condensed version was published as a 45 rpm flexi-disc for the “Pavilions” catalogue. The installation allowed Graham to continue his exploration of how an artwork is received by the public and cultural institutions. As he explained: “It starts with minimal art, but it’s about viewers observing themselves as they are being observed by others.” [1]
Nicolas Ballet, December 2024
Translated by Timothy Stroud
[1] Dan Graham, Theatre (Ghent: Anton Herbert, 1978), n.p.