Documentation video: https://vimeo.com/1054649750
The artwork explores the impact of modern social media and technology on self-identity, focusing on how the “gaze” bridges two ends: myself and the abstract notion of “the external world and other people.” Here, I incorporate others' gazes into my selfhood and image, immersing myself in the possible appearance of myself as a puppet-like ‘Other’, imagining and convincing myself of my beauty, and understanding myself through the existence of some abstract Others who don’t realistically exist.
As I engage in self-gazing through my phone, my personal space blurs with public space. The small camera lens creates spatial confusion, penetrating the boundary between the private and the public. At the same time, real people in my everyday life are drawn into this dynamic—both voluntarily and involuntarily—as “emitters” of the gaze. This connection also flows in the opposite direction, creating a field of gazes.
In the performance, I sit against a wall, holding my phone, repeatedly making the gesture of checking my appearance through the phone camera. The phone screen is projected in real-time onto myself while also being displayed on a laptop screen set on a pedestal a few meters away around the corner. As the projections reflect infinitely, with a lagging effect due to real-time signal transmission, each of my actions is repeated multiple times by the projection. A monologue plays in the background, read by multiple voices and gradually edited to become more chaotic and fragmented, reflecting on the fragmented self shaped by the external digital gaze and expressing a desire to see oneself through the eyes of an abstract online presence.