A room is immersed in semi-darkness. In the center of the space, a woman is lying on a sparse metal platform, frantically shaking her head back and forth on a foam pillow. She seems absent, lost in her own world. Her manic, compulsive movements appear autistic; at the same time, they evoke associations to the motion of a pump or piston.
A camera pointed at the woman’s head captures the action.
The scene is surrounded by three large projection screens, suspended from the ceiling in a half-circle around the platform. Seen on these are close-up shots of radar screens, rotating on their axes in a continual, almost stoic-looking fashion. They feel gigantic relative to the woman in the foreground. A beat can be heard that seems to be in sync with the rotating screens. Then a song is played, a woman sings in a duet with a man:
“…You don’t see me from a distance, don’t look at my smile/ And think that I don’t know, what’s under and behind me/ I don’t want you to look at me and think that what’s within you is in me (…) Seemingly connected, not alone in the world/ Not separated from birth/ We go past and remain/ because everyone recognizes themselves in it…”
Gradually the music fades into a tranquil waltz. After awhile this communicates a feeling of being safe and protected, a kind of contentedness. The rotating of the radar screens seems more and more like a spinning dance motion, which also imparts something harmonic to the woman’s manic gestures.
The entire time, the camera is recording the rhythmic movements of her head, transmitting it to a small monitor via a long, heavy cable, which is suspended from the ceiling at the entrance to the installation. In addition to the monitor, which at times also shows the woman’s face in close-up, the spectator has a view of the room. However, a barrier prevents the installation from being entered. The setting is perceived as a three-dimensional image, which, on the one hand, frames being alone as an aspect of privacy that is to be protected. On the other hand, the installation shows that protective elements can be abused; with their help privacy is exposed – the private becomes part of the public. And, vice-versa, the public becomes private, leading to a relativizing of the individual and the personal, or exposing supposed deviations from the norm.