Basel, Switzerland
June 14th, 2023 – June 18th, 2023
Mika Tajima’s evocative new installation, You Be My Body For Me (2023), meshes algorithmic structures and material objects within a brutalist mirrored architecture. Using a custom social network analysis algorithm, the installation constructs an intricate lace of evolving human networks, visualized as sequences of optically shifting glass surfaces. Sculptural concrete bases support smart glass panels arranged alongside and between Tajima’s Pranayama rose quartz monolith works, resulting in a monumental encounter that exists on the spectrum between the displacing cacophony of a hall of mirrors and the tranquility of a rock garden . Fusing critical theory, data analysis technology, and diagrams from alternative medicine, viewers of You Be My Body For Me confront reflections of themselves and windows to encounter those around them, multiplied and interconnected, blurring the boundaries of identity and inviting contemplation on the complexities of our mediated existence.
Angled to reflect each other and their surroundings, Tajima’s smart panels possess the remarkable ability to alter their translucency through electrical charges across their surfaces. When viewers approach the panels, sensors are triggered prompting a sequence of transparency and opacity in the different panels, corresponding to the multitude of connections in social networks. Amidst an interconnected mesh network, viewers find themselves confronted with fleeting glimpses of their own reflections in the fluctuating glass panels. These moments of self-encounter are paradoxical, as the very same panes that obstruct clear vision offer fragmented images of a detached self, liberated from corporeal confines. The experience is one of simultaneous revelation and obfuscation, as the glass intermittently reveals and conceals the self and one’s surroundings. The algorithm behind this transformative activation is based on those that drive social media platforms, stages for presenting altered or filtered versions of oneself. Juxtaposed with Tajima’s innovative mirror panels are her primordial Pranayama sculptures, ancient geological forms that contrast the immediacy of technology and social media. Unearthed from a Brazilian quarry, Tajima preserves the organic forms of the quartz and punctures them with bronze jet air nozzles mapped onto the quartz according to invisible energy flows of the body in traditional acupuncture. Evoking the historical uses of acupuncture and pneumatic air for healing, these quartz forms embody the balance between the physical and the metaphysical, inviting us to reflect on our own physicality and the profound unknowns of inner life.
