Eufearia

When viewers approach the mirror that makes up the work, they can see themselves with a brief delay - but also a number of viewers who came before them, because instead of a mirror surface, Eufearia is a screen disguised as a mirror that reproduces the images from a surveillance camera integrated into the object. While the mirror initially refers to the private space, in this work it refers to the representation of the self in the digital and thus the publicly accessible.
The neologism of the title Euferia combines the words euphoria and fear and thus describes the discrepancy between an enthusiasm for the possibilities of new technologies and the very real fear of the misuse they open up. And as the neologism suggests, there are also two opposing interpretations in the work: on the one hand, the (positive) acceptance of the possibilities, especially of self-expression, offered by the digital world. Traces of personal design can be found in the mirror: the portrait of a young person adorns the sidebar, a bunch of keys with a colourful pendant, a smiley sticker attached to the frame and a tribal tattoo. On the other hand, however, there is the unwanted transformation of the viewer from an active actor into an observed object. Without having consented to this, they are further processed in the work into data sets whose use is not revealed to the viewer.

All attempts at resistance - shards of glass set in concrete on the left side, pointed rivets on the right side of the frame - ultimately remain as a resistant but failed attempt to oppose appropriation. They are merely visual references and relics of an already outdated era that no longer stand a chance against the omnipresent technology that has also taken over the object inside.