Christine Bjerke
Interferens V - Window of the World
Visual works ’Reflections’ - Christine Bjerke, Collages 1-14 the reflection series, 2022
Textbased work ’Window of the World’ 2022 - Sofie Højgaard, 2022
‘Interferens’ (Interference) consist of a series of online exhibitions focusing on the exchange between two architectural media: A text-based piece and a visual piece.
In each exhibition, the two pieces will deal with the same architectural field and will, on the basis of this, interfere and explore new perspectives across the media.
The point of ‘Interferens’ is first and foremost to investigate concrete problem areas through artistic creations within architecture. The aim is also to investigate how two practices can inform each other and what arises in their mutual overlap as well as fractures.
Great thanks to Statens Kunstfond for supporting the project.
Window of the world
Described by sociologist and design theorist Benjamin Bratton, amongst others, mirrors are now also the 'black slabs' of our modern technological devices that we surround ourselves with.(1)
Glass facades, windows, side mirrors, tablets, iPhones, monitors and the telescope's speculum view and connect the inner and outer spaces that make up our world. Like a window perforates a solid surface, the mirror opens to multiple viewpoint and allow us to see.
Directly and indirectly, mirror reflections shape both our inner and outer world - the perception of ourselves and our worldview.
In the mirror, we see ourselves through the glass, but we do also see ourselves in the world.
Utilizing the mirror surface it is possible to move, shift, distort and scale space enabling views and new images.
The mirror is a tool both as a perforator and window to the world but also as a tool to form new images.
The mirror as a window of opportunities creates a connection between Narcissus and Echo (2), a church-like liquid mirror telescope/observatory (3), and 'Window of the world', projecting/projected architecture icons and landmarks of the globe into the framework of a theme park in Shenzhen.
Scene XX1: Liquid mirror Observatory
As a result of rising temperatures and drought, Narcissus' lake has dried up and Narcissus has set out to find himself again. He has strayed far into the Vancouver wasteland. Echo has, as a sound reflection of Narcissus' call to himself, followed him all the way. They have arrived at a white wooden house, which, like a church without a congregation, lies deserted as the only landmark in the area.
When Narcissus and Echo enter, a long-haired man dressed in a white scrub stands in front of a 6 meter wide circular vessel filled with liquid silver. He stands straight, with his arms out to make an eccentric picture to promote his Sunday service, which he streams directly from the telescope, he says.
Echo thinks, that the liquid looks as if made by the sleek facades of metropolises. The huge mercury mirror looks still while something under is swung in a rotating motion, like a membrane over a turning universe embryo. Making it a hall for something to come.
The mercury forms a perfect parabola shape which reflects the light of the universe into a smaller mirror. Through the two mirrors, enormous distances in the universe are projected into a comprehensible image.
Narcissus immediately discovers his lost beloved in the huge mirror vessel. Captivated by his floating doppelganger, he leans over the glistening surface with a deep longing to unite and become one with the gaze of himself and himself.
He compliments how his beloved’s smooth skin stands out emphasized by the swirling current of the mercury.
Scene XX2: Speculum
Echo excitedly points up at the small mirror above the tub to show Narcissus the universe. Narcissus looks up and he lets out a plaintive sound as his heart breaks.
As if the telescope were a large window between the globe and the cosmos, the light is able to move in both directions and Narcissus is projected through the mirrors into infinite space.
The distance to himself is suddenly enormous and his perfect image is fragmented projected onto celestial objects with colossal distances. He can no longer maintain his self image. Narcissus, in grief and longing to be united with his reflection, throws himself into the swirling body of mercury and drowns happily united with himself.in happy unity between himself and his self image.
Echo is left with great wonder/awe at Narcissus's sudden passing, only to discover herself in the secondary mirror, which, like an echo of the light, reflects the floating parabola / mirror of the telescope. but unlike Narcissus, Echo is used to travel with the need of surface or other sound bodies.
In the same second, Echo is projected on a mega scale into the universe, like two big amazed eyes that finally see themselves in the full extent of the world. Her grief evaporates and she discovers the many echoes of the world and falls in love.
Scene XX3: Black mirror
Echo stands in the darkness in the telescope. The last splashes of mercury makes soft tongues of light lazily lick the walls after narcissus's huge splash into the tub. Longing, Her eyes follow the last reflections of the narcissus around the edge until the corner where an apple glows in the mercury reflections.
Ekko reaches out, she sees her big mute mouth reflected. A reflective apple is engraved in a black tablet.
The Jesus-like cosmologist comes back into the room as he says that his apple device has disappeared and that it is a problem because that is how he does his Sunday services on zoom. Echo doesn't really understand what he's talking about, but she hides the apple mirror behind her back and replies 'zoom'.
Alone again, she takes out the black mirror and she looks straight down into a thousand faces in pixels that, like echoes of her, look back with astonished eyes.
Echo takes a picture of herself, a kind of externalized selfie of her eyes out in the universe and herself in the church-like observatory.
Scene XX4: Window of the World
Echo sits up against the liquid mirror, bent forward and deeply absorbed by the endless windows of the black mirror. She is searching for all the wonderful echoes, materialized in steel, concrete, metal and papier-mache and pixels. The thousand Eiffel Towers and Gherkins she saw from the cosmos.
She alternates between studying the telescope image of the universe, google earth and google images, which all seem to present things side by side that outside the presented viewpoint are enormously distant from each other or incomparable in scale.
She feels a kinship with the built icons who, like her, travel freely and materialize in many places.
Echo, the copy's immaterial sister, is caught up by the wisdom of her reflective apple and many views of the black mirror.
Tell me, Siri, where is most echo in this world?
Window of the world - A park of materialized echos - 130 reproductions of landmarks in 43 hectares, Siri replies while viewing a photo of The Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, The Sydney Operahouse, Colosseum, The winter palace, Acropolis, Persepolis and Taj Mahal side by side uplit and well arranged.
