Discourse on Twin Mirrors

2020, 12min, FHD, 3 channel video installation, 
stereo sound, b&w/color
commissioned by SeMA Seoul Museum of Art

Discourse on Twin Mirrors reads moments at which light and immaterial images strategically intervene in the material world, beginning with the research of the 11th-century Iraqi opticist.Stories about the eye and about darkness and light connect with the camera obscura, mirages, and 19th-century stereoscopic photographs that encapsulate ambulant desires to simultaneously observe and destroy.

These visualities go on to connect yet again with Medina Wasl, an Iraqi military base reproduced in California’s Mojave Desert by the 21st-century film industry. Here, where cinema becomes part of actual physical war, are formed the doppelg'ngers of Baghdad. Just as in the old tales in which anyone who faces their own doppelg'nger must meet their death, this piece tells a story of mirrors that can never meet, never reflect each other.

Discourse on Twin Mirrors  production credit

Film by Minha Park
Camera1/Edit/Script Minha Park
Camera2 Jackson McCoy
Music/Mixing Minwhee Lee
Voice Performance Alabaster Rhumb
Translation Soyoon Ryu, Catherine Shannon
Film Location Fort Irwin Military base, CA, U.S.
Commissioned by SeMA Seoul Museum of Art
Supported by Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture
Production year 2014-2019