2013
architectural projection
Tower Automotive. Toronto, Canada.
for Art Spin 4th Annual Exhibition
with Patricio Davila
Workers That Live In The Mirror is a video collage cobbled together from a variety of contemporary and historical sources depicting workers leaving, entering or blocking factories. It was projected on the facade of an abandoned factory that was turned into an art gallery for one week in the summer of 2013.
The title is drawn from a fable written by Jorge Luis Borges:
"One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but at the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere slavish reflections.
Nonetheless, a day will come when the magic spell will be shaken off. The first to awaken will be the Fish. Deep in the mirror we will perceive a very faint line and the color of this line will be like no other color. Later on, other shapes will begin to stir. Little by little they will differ from us; little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of glass or metal and this time will not be defeated. Side by side with these mirror creatures, the creatures of water will join the battle. In Yunnan they do not speak of the Fish but of the Tiger of the Mirror. Others believe that in advance of the invasion we will hear from the depths of mirrors the clatter of weapons."
-- From "The Fauna of Mirrors" in The Book of Imaginary Beings (1957) by Jorge Luis Borges
photos by Iain M Campbell
