DOPPELGÄNGER

UK | 1979 | 10 min

In this video performance, Scottish artist Elaine Shemilt films herself during make-up, with the camera switching from her face to the image reflected in the mirror while she draws thick lines on the latter. Thus, an other self is sketched, creating an imperfect correspondence. The gesture is accompanied by a male voiceover with the audio recordings of two psychological analyses on schizophrenia in an English pronunciation that betrays a non-native speaker. The doppelganger, i.e., the same and other than oneself at the same time, evokes anxieties and impulses that are often sinister, ghostlike, and at times mean. But the double is also the alter-ego, the disguise, the swerve from which to observe ourselves from an oblique perspective to attain a new consciousness. Superimpositions, interferences, chippings, and refractions interweave in Shemilt’s work for a layered consideration on the image, its reflection, and its representation. (t.p.)