Man With Mirror

The initial idea for Man with Mirror was to project a film of myself, holding and moving a mirror, onto myself as live performer, also holding and moving the same mirror, in a series of choreographed movements. The projected light bounces off the mirror and around the cinema space. For me the interest was in the productive tension between the illusion and the material form that it depends on, just as painting is at the same time both paint and illusion. In Man with Mirror I wanted to create such a dialogue between the two spaces, the external space of nature where it was shot, and the internal space of the cinema in which it is performed. (…) 

Over time the performance has gained a further interest. It has now become a testament to the passage of time, as an increasingly aged me performs in dialogue with an illusory me, fixed in my mid 20s. Man with Mirror has evolved a long way from its original intent; it was never conceived to be about time in that sense. I used myself as performer only for convenience — since I could always be relied upon to be available. From that initial role as a mere functionary, I have now unwittingly become the principal focus of the performance. 

Guy Sherwin is a UK artist and filmmaker whose pioneering work in experimental cinema spans more than five decades. Inspired by films and expanded cinema from the London Filmmakers’ Co-op, he began making films and acquired laboratory skills while working there during the 1970s. His 16mm films are often highly concentrated in their form, but very diverse in terms of their imagery and approach. The Short Film Series (1975-ongoing) and live performance pieces such as Man with Mirror (1976-ongoing) involve human, animal and natural phenomena transcribed as filmic subjects, while his optical sound films and performances explore a wide variety of abstract audiovisual ideas. 

Photo: Ben Dowden