FUTURE SELF Installation

Video Installation by Radha Mateva
First presented in Ruf Reaktor, Berlin, July 2011.
Music used in video: Soundtrack from „Alphabet“ by David Lynch, 1968
„Non-Response“ by Ra Cailum, from the Album „Bite Marks“

FUTURE SELF

Most people have an everyday-relationship with the future projection of themselves. Mostly, they tend to over-expose their current state in it. If they are gorgeous now, they will be even more gorgeous then. If they are miserable now, the future looks very dark too.

The painting of a portrait of one’s Future Self is used for therapy.

This video installation offers a space for creating a possible version of one’s self. Even if one is completely happy with the present self.

The basic concept of the installation is de/re-construction.

First level – Deconstruction:

Light meets mirror – the captured image is projected onto a reflective surface with mirrors, that themselves reflect the image in a certain direction. Here the possibilities of de-constructing the original image are boundless, though this level of reflexion is one-way: light (projection) – reflexion, image – deconstruction of image. A reference to Derrida’s philosophical term of Deconstruction is obvious. The image of a person is trimmed down, „exposing the supposed contradictions and internal oppositions upon which it is founded“. In the Installation, this process is made subconscious. The deconstructed image is visible in the moment the person enters the range of the instrument of deconstruction (the camera). And there is no violence in this destructuring, the person feels invited to play with precision.

Second level  – Reconstruction:

The person, while facing his abstract reflection, will try to find the usual image of him/herself. The process of reconstruction begins. The installations challenges the creativity of the person, to re-design this usual image. Though, as Derrida states, „there is nothing outside the text“, with „text“ being an image here. Every reference or way of interpreting the first image is another image. The person enters in a loop-search of his future self, only to discover, that the first „objective“ picture, is exactly as non-objective, as the last. This is the point, where de- and re-construction become the same process. Objective reality and abstract subjectivity collide, freeing the Self, future or present, from its analytical weight, so that it can play freely with the colors, shapes and searches of life.

Ardian Hartono made a performance based on repetition at the second showing of FUTURE SELF.
The daily ritual of taking a shower, styling one’s hair, putting on clothes and listening to some music is broken down to bits of a movement.

The installation reacts to these movements, specific color shapes become visible.

The performer sees the camera as a mirror.