Stefaan Loncke

t/w/i/l/i/g/h/t or the fifth (alter)form This installation consists of two videos. They each display a man. They form each others mirror image: they have copied each others gestures, each others lives, each others world. The video screens face each other, because in this world of duality, the two men look at themselves through the eyes of the other… they have build and remain their identity through the eyes of the other. Yet they are not the same, they are in a way like opposites… as they are mirror images, they consist of a ‘left’ man and a ‘right’ man. One is left-handed, one is right-handed. But because in their world of duality, one always coincides with the other, they are unaware of the difference. ‘Leftman’ and ‘Rightman’ are concepts unknown to them. ‘Leftman’ knows only the reality of ‘Rightman’… ‘Rightman’ knows only the reality of ‘Leftman’. In their world, they ‘must’ coincide with the other in order to have an identity. Maybe they are aware of the possibility 'not to be like the other'. If they are aware of it, they have no answer to an alternative. They can love or hate it, but they can’t turn away from the fact of measuring their existence by it. It’s a static world of duality, yet from within this world, the duality itself is not known. Each video also produces a sound… a tone, pitched to the other sound: two sounds, but because they are pitched, only one frequency (one tone) fills the room. So far their existance is subject to the following space: 0 dimensional - the point 1 dimensional - the line (projected point) 2 dimensional - the square (projected line) 3 dimensional - the body (projected square) 4 dimensional - the time body (projected body) Each of this dimensions has a direction, which was not embedded in the former dimension. Then what about the 5th? Following the 4/1 blueprint in kabbalistic interpretation, I could wonder if the '0-dim. point' is the new dimention. I here take the proposition of Pythagoras, where '3' and '4', as thesis and antithesis in their dualistic behavior, are made 'visible' by the 'not-imbedded' direction of the 5^2 as third party, giving an answer to their dualistic existance. I call it here the twilight. It’s the visitor of the installation that forms the ‘twilight’ factor in the dual world of the installation. The visitor is the third party, who brings ‘distance’ in the installation. With this distance comes the perception of difference. From this third point of view, from the distance of the visitor, he/she can perceive the difference between the Leftman and Rightman. With this ‘distance’ and ‘difference’, comes also the possibility of ‘choice’: the visitor is not static like the two men… the visitor can walk to one of the screens, he can remain in the middle, or walk away. Each of those movements are defined by ‘choice’. And by moving, the perception of the frequency of the emitted sounds will be altered: the hovering between the two tones, which was low or non existent in the dual state, will be perceived as a change in frequency while the visitor is walking (although nothing has changed to the pitch of the tone). The visitor is essentially integrally part of the installation. In order to be fully aware of this, the visitor will also have to be the 'twilight' to himself… he will have to create a distance towards himself in order to reflect upon his position within the installation. When the visitor does not make this distance towards himself, he will not be able to see himself in the installation… he will not reflect upon himself, but instead, become a reflection, entrapped in the initial dual state of the installation.