'(Wo)Man With Mirror' (Teaching and Learning Cinema, 2009- ) is a re-enactment of a work from the mid 1970s,  'Man With Mirror' (Guy Sherwin, 1976). In the last decade, many artists have been engaging with the past through re-making, re-enacting and repeating artworks from previous eras. Australian artist/archivist collaboration Teaching and Learning Cinema developed a re-enactment with Sherwin's piece in 2009. TLC worked with Sherwin to learn about his work, then we spent time following the rules and rigours of Sherwin's original but alert to critical decisions where we found we had to diverge from it. TLC's re-enactment became (Wo)Man With Mirror. We documented this work in a 'user's manual', with the idea that others might also want to re-make this piece themselves. 

Man With Mirror is an unsettlingly simple but visually arresting work involving a mirror and a super 8 film projection. It blends footage of a man with a mirror in a park, with a live-action version of the same man holding a similar mirror, creating a beautifully poetic doubling between live performer and filmed performer. 

Earlier this year, TLC worked with artist Laura Hindmarsh to help her try out the 'user's manual'. What emerged was that while the user's manual was helpful, Laura needed help in person from TLC. 

This artwork is an embodiment of the theory that not everything can be preserved simply by being documented and/or digitalised and set aside. The nature of certain artworks demands the live experience itself to keep them alive – they need the involvement of people to ensure they get passed on.

If people care about things from the past like archives, they may need to do some of the work to maintain them themselves – to truly archive certain things, like live art for example, in some cases the preservation is in the doing, the restaging, and taking an active role. This project explores just how important the role of passing things on from person-to-person is in keeping those things alive. 

The Background

Louise Curham has two careers, one as an archivist, one as an artist and film maker. Her work re-enacting live art from the 1970s in collaboration with Wollongong artist Lucas Ihlein (www.teachingandlearningcinema.org), along with her archiving knowledge, have given her a unique insight into the importance and challenges involved in archiving live art.

Along with other artists, Louise is using the outlier example of the 1976 'Man With Mirror' piece – an important artwork for people interested in early new media – to highlight her research theory that people and live performance are essential to pass on certain things, when there’s knowledge and information that’s not explicit.

“For example, in this piece, it's not obvious where to hold your hand with the mirror, or how to use a super 8 camera, you need to be shown by someone, you can't work it out by simply watching it on YouTube,” she says. “The bit I'm really looking at is what the archive can and should contribute to keeping these things alive, and what people need to contribute, because it's actually a mixture of both.”

Pitch For Funds

At the University of Canberra recent Pitch for Funds event, 17 researchers gave a 90 second pitch of their research ideas for a chance to win a share of $7,000 in prize money. Louise’s fascinating pitch has so far raised $1,536.88, but she is aiming for $3,000 to achieve her goals so please feel free to donate now.

In the work Louise has been doing in the past year, she and her colleagues have tested what they call a user's manual for the Man With Mirror artwork and have worked alongside an artist visiting Canberra, Laura Hindmarsh, to guide her with this manual. Now, Louise hopes to use the funds to allow artists in New Zealand to use the manual with no intervention whatsoever. “We want it as a control experiment to see what happens when you have recourse only to the archive,” explains Louise, “to test my hypothesis that works like Man With Mirror need people in order to live on, and to discover the impact of what happens when you don't have that human element involved.”

The artist are associated with Auckland's Old Folks Association, a grass roots critically-acclaimed community in the centre of Auckland.

Budget

Buy film stock 4 rolls of Wittner $45 per roll $180

Process film stock $35 per roll $140  

Buy super 8 projector $250 Eumig 610 series on eBay, could use something cheaper but this is a sustainable model eg bulbs purchaseable

Buy projector stand $50 + postage (could get expensive!)

Buy take up reels and film splicer $50 + could also get expensive

Studio working space $500

Lunches and petrol for the artists $100

Photographs and video of the artists at work $200

Artist Laura Hindmarsh and TLC’s Lucas Ihlein at work using the user’s manual.

Archiving live art is challenging. I will keep you updated on this as my project progresses.