The installation Paranoid Panopticum plays with the increasing fixation on control which can be experienced in our society. The maximizing of control becomes its own threat. Entering this paradox, one finds his/herself in the Paranoid Panopticum.

The installation consists of a nontransparent privalite-glasswall, one meter high and three meters long, which can change into a mirror. Opposite this wall there are several projection-screens. The spectator walks in-between these screens and the mirror. The mirror is permeable from behind, so a video camera can record the spectator. Since the recorded image is projected on the cloths opposite the mirror, you see yourself looking over your shoulder in the mirror, and also in this image you see yourself looking over your shoulder in the mirror. A mirrored "live" Droste-effect. Within this image there is a story played by actors connected to this situation. The course and the speed of this story are modified by the movement of the spectator in the space between the mirror and the projections. At certain places within the installation the spectator can activate certain "dreams" and play with these short movies.

The last scene of the scenario is determined by the story of the half-god Narcissus, his mirror image and the nymph Echo. At the moment Narcissus will "know himself" he will die. He dies at the moment he recognises his mirror image in the water surface and falls in love. By trying to touch it he destroys it, as a consequence of which he kills his own image, falls into the water and drowns. This is a turning point in the scenario. The spectator and his mirror image are being "suicided". Here the story starts over again.

The duration of the story can vary from three to five minutes. One enters in between the not-yet-mirroring mirror and the projection screens. The space in the projection is a projection of the space that surrounds the installation. This prerecorded space is empty. Slowly your face becomes visible in both the mirror and the projection. Not much later follows the repetition of your face. As you are longer in the installation, new images "dream-up" through your face and the space. If you move, they follow you, sometimes slow, sometimes fast. You can play with them – by moving around – but not really manipulate them.

Hermen Maat
lives in Amsterdam. 1985-1991 Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam; 1993-1995 Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht. Numerous stipends, teaching experience. Since the early 1990s participation in international exhibitions, Spatial Locations (1994), The Meetingpoint (1995), Individual Religious Acts (1997), Wallpiece (with Karen Lancel, 1999)

ZKM Institut für Bildmedien/V2 Rotterdam 2000