MIRROR, MIRROR
PERFORMANCE BY VERENA TSCHERNER
– by Kata Martincsák (intern at Improper Walls)
“...utopias have two expressions: one being the critique of what is, and the other, being the representation of what should be.”
Green and red lights, suddenly moving bodies -Verena Tscherner transformed Improper Walls’ room for one night into an experimental laboratory for utopias. Her performance, in collaboration with Dejan Klement, was part of the last exhibition at Improper Walls, called Hospitable Utopia.
Hospitable Utopia.vienna.ed was an adaptation of the group show produced in Užice, Serbia, in collaboration with Art & Science students from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, during the kick-off residency program at the Reflector gallery. The exhibition was divided into two parts and took place between 8.9-12.10.2021. The video of the amazing performance was featured in the second half. The live performance took place on the 24th of September at Improper Walls, during the group show’s first part’s finissage.. The atmosphere was fresh, except the performers’ movements were somehow familiar to me. Both artist, Verena Tscherner and Dejan Klement, visually discussed the idea of hospitality and searched for connections between mythology and images and fantasies of the mirror in our unconscious. In this article, my aim is to describe what I see, and how it connects the previous performances, which I saw this month in Vienna, to give an overall, comprehensive picture of Mirror, Mirror.
Mirror, Mirror… is an interactive media installation, which is made of a screen, a webcam, and usually two gloves with complementary colours. As a background in the room, there is a black canvas. In the background on the computer, there is a self-coded program, which reacts to both these complementary colours by color-coding. If one of the colours, in this case, the neon green colour, is detected by the webcam, the user starts to paint a black layer over the screen, and therefore it appears like she/he is erasing her/himself. If the other colour, in this case, the red colour, is detected by the webcam and therefore recognized by the program, the user can erase the black she/he before painted onto the screen, and therefore become visible again. This transparency with the background also took an important part in the performance.
As Florentina Holzinger devised her own Divine Comedy, at Kunsthalle, Tscherner also creates an alternative story about the great Narcissus. Compared to Holzingers’s work, the performance is also based on a narrative story, mythological background: Mirror, mirror concept based on the fairy tale of Snow White, and on the Greek myth of Narcissus, both stories connected with mirrors and virtual images. Narcissus in this way conducts a concentrate of his own virtual image, as it refers back to his role in Greek mythology where he eventually falls in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, staring at it for the remainder of his life. From my perspective, one of the most interesting parts of this performance is that the boundaries between women and the man also merge, as we cannot decide who is really Narcissus, the man or the women? At Holzinger’s show, the audience can only see naked women, nudity, and sexual acts, but at the same time we can see the whole play as humanity’s struggle: In an operatic celebration of life and death, music and dance join forces as art practices that aim to transcend. Transcendent layers also merge up in Mirror, mirror. The way how the performers act together creates an environment where thinking about utopias is approachable. Verena Tscherner questions how we can think about realistic utopias, how we can connect, and collectively imagine a better future.
The two performers also interact with the installation, as they wear complementary colours, which connect with the coding-program, neon-red, and neon-green. In the first part, the artists are covered. We can't see their faces as they are wearing all over their body the same performance costume made from body-fitting, eclectic fabric.At the same time, the two artists' body language is really intimate. They are more dancers than actors, they are more personalities than characters of the play. They are reflecting the other’s movements, as they are also just a reflection in the monitor that the audience can see. In Deep Dreaming Creatures, which was a performance by Daniel Aschwanden (†) and Lucie Strecker taking place at the University of Applied Arts Vienna’s performance laboratory, on 7 October, 2021. In this piece they explore the difference between human and non-human bodies and aspects, also plants, animals, and machines. The main question of this performance was, how these bodies can touch or blend into one another. Transparency was also an important question here. The connection between the performer and artificial intelligence was obvious. The audience could see on a thermal camera how the body temperature increases as the performer moves. The Deep Dreaming Creatures extended the body limits of the performer; it explored how technologies, social norms and scientific narratives and art can change what we understand as human entities. Despite the fact that the performance was more based on a dystopian future, I think it also explores the same themes. Mirror, mirror also brought up questions of intimacy, hospitality, and environment, and of course transparency; - how can we describe our feelings and emotions as transitory? How can we transfer emotions? The interesting part of this performance is that it starts from a really personal and intimate angle, and in the end it becomes interactive- anybody can join and try out the installations. Tscherner this way made the experience collective, pointing out the fact that we can also see our own reflections in the mirror.
The first edition of this performance, as I wrote above, was held during the artist-residency in Užice. Verena Tscherner was physically disabled to do any kind of performance on her own because she was walking with crutches since she hurt her foot on the first evening. So two artist colleagues from the residency, Eugenie Desmet and Georgij Melnikov, helped her with the first performance. From the content and the approach, it was a bit different from the Vienna edition. The difference was that she gave only a basic storyline and keywords for the two other artists, Eugenie and Georgij to which they connected their own stories.. Another difference was that they had additional color-coded objects, like the green-taped bottles from Georgij’s installation in Užice, which played an important role in their interpretation of the idea of exchanging objects. This was very much related to the topic of Hospitable Utopia. Just as the roles of performance proved transferable, also the idea of the end of the performance changed and became more outcome-oriented. Tscherner used many layers in this performance, and it was a clever choice from her to make the installation interactive, as this way, the audience can participate and discover the magic of the collectively imagined place: Utopia. According to Horkheimer:“utopias has also an expression, being the representation of what should be.”
About the artist: Verena Tscherner first studied at the University Of Music (MDW) in Vienna. For the first time, she connected with digital arts, when she started her artistic practice in artistic photography, and in this case, also specialized in digital photography and photomontages. Since the beginning of 2019, when she did her first interactive video installation with a treadmill (Fit In), she realised she wanted to go more into the direction of media art. Since then, she got a lot into mechatronics, coding, and 3D modelling. All these additional skills were mainly concentrated on creating even more interactive media installations. Most of the new skills she learned in the digital art class. Since digital art is a part of the media art branch at the University of Applied Arts, her artistic practice connects a lot with the field of digital arts. In February the idea of 2019 was her first time to exhibit in Improper Walls. She applied for an open call for a group show and becameone of the selected artists. The group show was called LIE TO ME BABY and she showed there her first interactive video installation Fit In.