Mirror Your Community Installation

Authors’ Comment

The installation "Mirror Your Community," part of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival, speaks about people, public space, and a festival that, through culture, brings people into public spaces.
The mirror is not just about accepting what you see in it; it's about taking pleasure in the person who looks back at you while also taking the time to see beyond the surface of attractive appearances. The mirror is about understanding that our value lies in unity, and that each individual contributes to the common good. It is about realizing the common good, the inherited heritage, in a city where multiple cultures and generations have coexisted, and understanding that time is not just about the present but that the present gains value through its legacy. Heritage means constructed traces as well as individual memory. The mirror signifies trust in one another and also the exaggeration of the self expressed in selfies but also the leisure of not reaching for your phone to take a photo when you see yourself.
The Sibiu International Theatre Festival celebrates architecture by bringing performances to public spaces, turning building facades into grand stages or backgrounds for people to gather. Buildings are no longer just on a heritage list; they are a living heritage through the people of the city.
The installation is not so much a so-called mirror but more like a long, thin, and tall wall, 18 meters in length, with a unique feature, and that is to show.
All building walls show something. A building's facade is a wall showing one face of the building, but the facade has no meaning without the building's interior and exterior. In other words, a facade is not merely an interface between two environments. This long wall is a highly reflective surface. This clear mirror surface is a photograph of everything happening both outside and inside a place. It reflects the city space - the space of coming together, and, most importantly, in a festival, it reflects people who seek culture coming together. The building's interior is not visible; merely standing in front of the wall, the mirror does not allow a view into the ground floor of the blue house. The image will be of a ground floor of the blue house isolated from the public image.
Sibiu, through its houses and architecture, characterized by having shops and craftsman workshops at the ground level of buildings, leads to the idea that public space transforms. This is why we appreciate cities of this kind, as public space doesn't abruptly begin at the open gate, with a sharp division from private space. The city is characterized as an infusion, an intermingling of the public with the private, a transformation into a semi-public space.
The mirror transforms public space. It shows how people are in that public space but also allows the public space to enter the building. The mirror brings public space from the viewer's perspective, making you part of the ground floor of the blue house, along with all the others who are nearby and reflected on the wall.