FLIP-FLOP. VERTICAL BILATERAL SYMMETRY IN RECENT VIDEOWORK

L’institut supérieur pour l’étude du langage plastique (ISELP) is organising Spéculations spéculaires from April 24th to April 26th. Le reflet du miroir dans l’image contemporaine (Spectacular speculations. Reflections of the mirror in contemporary image), an international colloquium featuring a panel of twenty international specialists who will discuss the subject of the ‘miroir’ in contemporary art. Argos contributes with a programme on the split-screen on Friday night, and a talk about bilateral symmetry in the moving image by artistic director Paul Willemsen the day after.

Flip-flop. On vertical bilateral symmetry in recent video work
Persian carpets, Rorschach tests and butterflies mounted on pins in natural history collections, these are symmetrical visual mantras that are only too familiar to us. Since the end of the nineties these static forms have had a notable audiovisual counterpart: video works based on reflection around a central vertical axis. The right half of the image reflects the left, so that the axis becomes a line of transformation, a zone of simultaneous creation and destruction of form. These feedback effects are pure mind tricks. The talk will use examples to explore this digital mirror effect in greater depth. How does it relate to perception and cognition and in which ways do artists employ it conceptually?

PROGRAM

- Bernard Gigougnon, Starship, 2002, 6’, video, colour, sound.
- Ken Jacobs, The Georgetown Loop, 1996, 11’, 35mm, black & white, silent.
- Jo Huybrechts, Loop 5’, 2003, 5’19”, video, black & white, sound.
- Michel François, Déjà vu (Hallu), 2002, 12’30”, video, colour, silent.
- Nicolas Provost, Suspension, 2007, 4’27", colour and black & white, silent.
- Bigas Luna, Dali, Mouche, Page One (extract from Origines-Courbet), 2004, 8’10", video, colour and black & white, sound.
- Nicolas Provost, Bataille, 2003, 7’18", video, black & white, sound.
- Nicolas Provost, Papillon d’Amour, 2003, 3’30", video, black & white, sound.