The mirror is one of the many surfaces we encounter daily. The mirror is the looking glass in which we see our own body reflected. It is the individual encounters we have with other people, in which our social selves are reflected. It is culture at large, in which our ideas and thoughts are mirrored in the expressions of others. Mirrors are the measure by which we double-check our reality.
The mirror, being that to which we look in order to understand ourselves or the world around us, is not indifferent to our gaze. It’s reflections shift and bend, and sometimes, when it knows we are looking, it denies us insight altogether and shows us lies.
LOOKING INTO THE MIRROR, THE BLACK WOMAN ASKED, "MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHO'S THE FINEST OF THEM ALL?" THE MIRROR SAYS, "SNOW WHITE, YOU BLACK BITCH, AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!!!"
Jan Švankmajer - Alice
The mirror, both object and encounter, is the bridge that stretches between the inside and the outside of the head/body.
"My head, for example, my head: what a strange cavern that opens onto the external world with two windows. Tow openings– I am sure of it, because I see them in the mirror...
This back, which I can feel leaning against the pressure of the couch when I am lying down and which I might catch but only by the ruse of the mirror. And what is this shoulder, whose movements and positions I know with precision, but that I will never be able to see without dreadfully contorting myself?...
There's no need for a soul, nor a death, for me to be both transparent and opaque, visible and invisible, life and thing. For me to be a utopia, it is enough that I have a body."
-Michel Foucault "Utopian Body", from "Sensorium" by Caroline Jones
Michael Jackson- Man in the Mirror
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