Second Self

Second Self is an audiovisual work and a first collaboration between choreographer and performer Nien Tzu Weng and composer and digital artist Myriam Bleau. Through movement, sound and video, the performance explores the object of the screen as tactile interface, prosthesis, mask and mirror.

Custom-made small LED screens of irregular shapes are worn on the bodies of the performers (Weng and Bleau). Gestures on the surface of these interactive devices inform the sonic and video elements. Amplifying the sense of touch, they reveal the porous and elusive surface delimiting our idea of a separate, autonomous self.

The project's title "Second Self" refers to Sherry Turkle's book, published in 1984. The theorist suggests that intelligent machines that exhibit human characteristics act as a mirror or "second self" through which we define the image we have of ourselves. The object of the screen, omnipresent in our societies, mediates this relationship to our "second self", acting both as a portal towards a hyper-connected network, but also as a mirror, reflecting back an altered image.

Through different scenes, the artists explore the symbol of the mirror, social dynamics and the myth of Narcissus and Echo. While specular and auditory reflections (echoes) multiply as in a mirror palace, a strange ritual unfolds, the performers becoming in turn reflections of the other, infra-human creatures, twins, shadows or machines.

"At the center of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg."
- Donna Haraway, 1985