VIEWMASTER | 2007

Focusing on the different logics specific to the theater space and the gallery, Viewmaster (2007/2008), is a performance and installation, as well as a tool for dramatizing venues and the viewing public.

Trick & Illusion :

The Viewmaster is a transportable mini-theater and live-cinema machine in one. It’s peculiar architecture and function is inspired by the Pepper’s Ghost Illusion, a well known optical trick made popular in the theater during the late nineteenth century, before the invention of cinema. Using the illusion as a central mechanism, the Viewmaster produces a live cinema based on the sequence of reflected spaces rather than projected images.

A tool for sequence making :

Technically the Viewmaster is a theater box with a double interchangeable interior room or 'stage'. By altering the light situation either one or the other stages or a superposition of both becomes visible. It uses non-digital techniques to produce a cinematic sequence of spaces rather then images. The glass wall acts as a window, mirror and projection screen. Using sound, lighting and image, the traditional set-up of theater and cinema is duplicated and questioned.

Viewmaster shows you a ‘real’ special effect. You know it is a trick. You can even see how the trick works and still your enchanted by its magic.

Sharing spaces :

Since the invention of projection in the late 19th century, film has become practically synonymous with the cinema or movie theater. Modeled after the traditional theater dispositive, the place where films are shown is a divided space: on the one hand is the screen, acting as a window onto an imaginary depth, and on the other, the auditorium, acting as a single, shared point of view, occupied by an audience that sit immobile in the dark.

The Viewmaster reconfigures this traditional set-up, proposing a cinema where auditorium and screen are reversible, where multiple view points are possible and where the visitor can be both viewer and participant within a live image making process.

As opposed to other cinemas, which must hide from the audience its own gaze and projections, the architecture of the viewmaster allows viewers, both inside and out, to perceive their own positions, their own bodies and identifications.



Performance/Installation/Tool

Considered as a tool for gallery spaces as well as theaters, the Viewmaster operated for the first time at Netwerk / Center for Contemporary Art from September 15th - October 20th, 2007. After having toured as a performance as well as an installation during 2008, Heike Langsdorf, Laurent Liefooghe and Ula Sickle are focusing now on the potential of Viewmaster as a tool for use by other artists. From fall 2009 they will develop a format where several invited guests can develop a personal score based on Viewmaster's architectural and conceptual set-up. By inviting other artists to produce a work within it's existing structure, modifying it according to their needs, the Viewmaster becomes a platform for emerging projects that are fully authored by the invited artist.

Tour

05-09-2007 and 20-10-2007 Performances, Netwerk / center for contemporary art
15-09-2007 until 20-10-2007 Installation, Netwerk / center for contemporary art
14-02-2008 Dedonderdagen, de Singel, Antwerp
30-08-2008 and 31-08-2008, 05-09-2008 and 06-09-2008, Kaaitheater, Brussels
07-10-2008 until 17-10-2008 Installation Almost Cinema Festival, Vooruit, Gent
08-10-2008 and 9, 10 &11-10-2008 Performances, Almost Cinema, Vooruit, Gent
26-10-2008 until 30-10-2008 Performances Opening Festival of Teatre Novy, Warsaw
03-08-2009 until 07-08-2009 Performances Theater aan Zee Festival, Oostende


concept/realisation/dramaturgy :
Heike Langsdorf, Ula Sickle, Laurent Liefooghe
architecture :
Laurent Liefooghe
second cast :
Shila Anaraki
performance :
Heike Langsdorf, Ula Sickle
light technique :
Laurent Liefooghe, Hans Meijer, Ula Sickle
sound technique :
Pete Connelly
production :
Klaus Ludwig / Caravan
co-production :
Rebecca September, frogs OS, Kunst/Werk, Netwerk / center for contemporary art
support :
Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Nadine, WP-Zimmer
thanks to :
Shila Anaraki, Shizuka Hariu, Nadine, WP-Zimmer, Alexander Baervoets, v-plus, Michael Schmid, Domenico Giustino, Christoph Ragg, Monty