(July 2011)

Digital Video, Duration: 8 min.

Identical twins (with ambiguous/unknown sexual and ethnic identities) were separated, shown the same slideshow of 100 images, and asked to identify each image. The images, taken from a Google image search for “Rorschach,” varied from inkblots to celebrity photos to popular memes. The twins were not privy to the selection process and were asked merely to identify what they thought they saw.

In one sense their struggle to identify arbitrary imagery mirrors the viewer’s struggle to come to grips with their twinned but mutable identity. But in the pauses, silences, and shifts of attention that happen over the course of eight minutes a space of unknowability opens up, with all the mixed emotions it creates.

 

 

 

 

(c) Lizzy De Vita 2011