A flat wall floating in space made translucent by images projected on to both sides. The conduit of perception in “Nothing but Space” (1997) is our physical relation to the scale of the double-projected image. Technical Lislegaard documented and filmed the movements and orientation in her studio through a mirror foil. Liquid images float across the screen, seductive, permeable, negating any orientation that seams, cuts, walls, or angles can offer. Figures cross the amorphous sphere, disappearing into a band of melted objects and walls, continuously swallowed by the rhythmic flow of the camera movement. A parallel space spreads across the surface of the screen, centrifugal in its effect, a visual vortex, a mercury concave trapping of visual images. Tempted to fall into the space, the viewer is trapped within the space looking inside from the inside. The “other side”, like a mirror, is inaccessible but present, creating the illusion of a hollow cave, an unreachable circular horizon stretched out in front of our eyes. The physical and psychological dialogue between the depicted space and the spectator is established through the viewer, who like a filter turns the information into a reverse reaction of the senses; causing a physical reaction of vertigo and attraction. The cognitive vision is tested for it’s haptic capability. The need to tough, to relate is satisfied through the visual capacity with all other senses joining to reinforce the perception.
- Barbara Clause, “…her left hand moves lightly over the surface of the wall…”, In Residence: Ann Lislegaard-slowly spinning, brochure, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway, 2001