Mise En Collision

Tate Modern, London
2008

‘If ideality and reality in all naivete communicated with one another, consciousness would never emerge, for consciousness emerges precisely through the collision, just as it presupposes the collision. Immediately there is no collision, but mediately it is present. As soon as the question of a repetition arises, the collision is present, for only a repetition of what has been before is conceivable.’
– Soren Kierkegaard, Repetition

After a few technical difficulties, the video flickers to life. The room is mirrored on the screen: the architecture, the lighting, the chairs, the projector, and six members of the audience. The rest of the audience is absent in the reflection, somehow extracted from the representation. The six who are present, mirror their projected actions live and in real time: one coughs (both on-screen and in the screening room), another points to the screen and whispers in the ear of her companion, two switch seats, another calls himself on his mobile phone. Placed into head-on collision: ideality and reality, past and present, recorded and live.

Presented as part of "Gramophones, Films, Typewriters," an evening of audio, video and text works related to the theories of Friedrich Kittler.