The piece consists of a rotating mirror and a real-time (live) image of the mirror projected back on to the wall. The limits of representation is investigated by creating a conflict between representation and the subject. In the projected image, every time the mirror faces directly towards the camera, a hot white light bursts out of the frame of the projected image and encroaches into the represented space of the installation. The viewer is one step removed, looking at the representation of the space he/she occupies from the real space outside of representation. The viewer sees the projected image as an authentic representation as the image echoes everything he sees in the actual space. Even the viewer himself. But when the mirror points directly at the camera, a hot white light bursts only into the represented space and the viewer is left to reconcile the contradiction as the light never enters his space. The light is nowhere to be seen in the real space the viewer occupies. For a brief moment, for the duration of time the viewer is reconciling the contradiction, the white light slips outside of representation and exists somewhere between our real space and the representational space. The light embodies the impossibility of representation.

Copyright 2012, Akihiko Miyoshi // miyos "at" reed "dot" edu