photo © antonia pfitzner
Although we exist, we cannot see ourselves directly. In order to recognise ourselves, we depend on another medium — mirrors, water or the eyes of another person. There is no way to confirm whether what I see is the same as what another person sees. Even when two people share the same space and moment, their perceptions may differ.
This uncertainty of vision forms the basis of my work. Using mirrors, I aim to reveal as well as reflect: to make visible what would otherwise remain hidden and draw attention to the unnoticed dimensions of everyday life.
In the tram project, eleven performers each carried a mirror and sat among passengers on Dresden’s tram line 7, accompanied by a photographer and a videographer. Through the tram’s windows and the mirrors, the performers offered new perspectives on the journey and the surroundings. Starting from the same station, the performers gradually disembarked one by one until only one person remained.
This transformed the tram into a moving theatre, an unrecognised stage on which daily life unfolds. Passengers found themselves part of a play for a moment, their reflections mingling with the cityscape outside. Yet these scenes were fleeting; unless they were noticed, they vanished into time.
Through this work, I aim to demonstrate that every shared space is also a theatre of the non-place. It is a stage that we rarely acknowledge, yet which exists nonetheless. When we shift our perspective, even slightly, we discover fragments of ourselves and our environment that would otherwise remain hidden.