Segami

2010

Contributors: Elodie Descoubes / designer and Stéphane Sautour / artist

See with others

SEGAMI stages a self-evident truth: an image is always an image of something and the thing it represents is always something else. The gap between the thing represented and the représentation itself is the framework for the project. The exhibition put her public a front of one of the most universal and oldest tricks of representation: a mirror. So far SEGAMI has concentrated on installations, all based on the use of réflective material. One or more people can look at their reflections in a mirror. The six mirrors have names like « Cône », « Store », ou « Paravent ».

For people taking part in SEGAMI, the encounter with the mirror involves talking as well as looking. For the designers, Segami is supposed to produce images while constructing the place of the onlooker. The mirrors become the site of the image and the source of the story. It creates a shared space which has to be understood. Will the participants all say what they feel? Why not? In any case, there is never just one answer, because the freedom experienced in front of the mirror is different for each viewer. The important thing is the shared experience, because what the viewers see is reinforced by what their companions say. Seeing with others is the crux of the matter: what does my neighbour see and understand, and what do I like to see?

SEGAMI is a sort of curiosity cabinet in which the mirrors are based on the principle of enchantment: a mirror image is endless and cannot be exhaustively counted or fully interpreted. The infinite plurality of their relationship to this image brings out the viewers’ capacity for intelligence and feeling. So SEGAMI is an exhibition in which participants must feel acknowledged and be transformed by the interaction they are involved in. They can bring their own knowledge of a situation and find out what others know about it. Something new is created that no one could have done alone.

Exhibition:
- Festival du jeu, on the île des Vannes, Saint-Ouen, 22 april – 5 may 2013

Technics:
​- OPENWORK MIRROR, high pressure laminate panels, glass, expoy coated steel frame, L 130 x l 120 x H 150 cm 120 kg

- 3 SIDED MIRROR, high pressure laminate panels, glass, expoy coated steel frame, polyethylene foam shapes, L 100 x l 100 x H 100 cm 60 kg

- MIRROR BLIND, high pressure laminate panels, glass, expoy coated steel frame, L 130 x l 120 x H 150 cm 150 kg

- CONE, high pressure laminate panels, glass, L 250 x l 125 x H 140 cm 138 kg

- INFINITE CUBE, high pressure laminate panels, glass,  L 100 x l 100 x H 100 cm 102 kg

- MIRROR SCREENS, high pressure laminate panels, glass, expoy coated steel frame, L 130 x l 120 x H 150 cm (x2) 115 kg (x2)

- MIRROR WORKSHOP, high pressure laminate panels, glass, expoy coated steel frame, L 400 x l 200 x H 100 cm 120 kg

With the precious help from Enzyme.

Opposite photographs: Antoine Dumont
Video: Guilhem Moreau