INSTALLATION DIAGRAMS • SIDE • TOP
PROJECT DESCRIPTION • NOSCE TE IPSUM 2000-2001
"Nosce Te Ipsum" is Latin for "know thyself." The installation invites the audience to engage in a metaphorical act of violence—the destruction of a body. In the story that inspired the piece, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Wicked Queen asks: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" The mirror answers: "Queen it seems to me, there is none fairer in the land than thee!" Of course the dreaded day finally arrives when the mirror announces that Snow White had surpasses the Queen's beauty. Because the avatar did not return a predictable answer, the Queen’s entire conception of reality shattered.
Like the Queen and her followers, many cultures desire physical beauty of a particular variety—the "fairest" bodies appear on the covers of popular magazines. Nosce Te Ipsum asks viewers to consider new sorts of bodies with very different physical characteristics. Viewers entering the installation space, initially view a projected spare outline of an androgynous human figure. A dense line of words—"slice," "pierce," "slit," "cut"—move across the floor toward the projection. As the viewer treads on the line of text, the singular body ruptures. Layers tear away, as in a dissection, to reveal a collage of bodies of all shapes and sizes. As the viewer progresses, more layers tear away and fold back. Arriving at the final word, the viewer’s face, filmed in real time from a video camera, appears inside the projected composite. At this moment, observer and observed blur together in the hybrid body collage. Stepping toward or away from the projection reverses the process, the layers rapidly fusing, hiding the face.