Autoscopy for dummies - Antonin De Bemels

1 July - 15 September 2014

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Autoscopy for dummies - Antonin De Bemels

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An installation at the crossroads of sculpture, mapping and animation film. Antonin De Bemels transforms a wood sculpture into a living dummy, that tries desperately to find out whether it is human or not. It misses a lot of important body parts, like legs, arms, eyes, mouth... but wonders if all these human attributes are really necessary to be human. How can an inanimate object become a living thing? The installation shows the existential quest of a nonexistent being, and is at the same time a reflection on our own existential drift.

Autoscopy was defined by Critchley (1950) as "delusional dislocation of the body image into the visual sphere" and by Lukianowicz (1958) as "a complex psychosensorial hallucinatory perception of one's own body image projected into the external visual space". Both these imply that the self remains associated with the physical body and that a duplicate body is seen at a distance. (Susan Blackmore, Ph.D.)

Dummy 1) a figure representing the human form, used for displaying clothes, in a ventriloquist's act, as a target, etc. 2) a copy or imitation of an object, often lacking some essential feature of the original.

Trailer of the installation

About Antonin De Bemels

Antonin De Bemels was born in Brussels in 1975. Since 1997 he directed several experimental videos which were presented at various international festivals, mainly in Europe but also in the United States, Canada, Asia, South America and Australia. He also makes audiovisual performances, and creates audiovisual backgrounds for contemporary dance and theatre shows. His music and sound research is carried out under the pseudonym of Petite Porte de Bronze. Since 2002 he has been developing video installation projects. He collaborates on a regular basis with the entity known as Bonhomme Daniel.

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