G_C_N_P > rear mirror

2026 — Site-specific interactive video installation

Waschraum Zürich, former SBB Main Workshops, Zurich-Altstetten

A screen mounted above a washbasin takes the place of a mirror. A camera captures the space and those who enter it. Yet instead of returning a conventional reflection, the installation reconstructs the live image from fragments of historical photographs.

The images originate from the SBB Historic archive and document the former Swiss Federal Railways workshops in Zurich during the late 1940s and 1950s. Scenes of industrial labour, workshops and offices become the building blocks of a constantly shifting digital mosaic.

The past becomes the material through which the present is made visible.

As visitors move through the space, their images emerge from and dissolve into fragments of its history. The screen becomes both mirror and rear-view mirror, connecting the immediate presence of the viewer with people, near places and moments that have long since disappeared.

A red button allows visitors to interrupt the continuously changing image. For a brief moment, the live mosaic freezes. A QR code offers the possibility of taking this image away, transforming an ephemeral encounter into a personal keepsake. Whether to download or preserve the image remains the visitor's choice.

The work explores the relationship between place, time, memory and representation. Rather than presenting historical photographs as documents of a distant past, rear mirror brings them into an active relationship with the present.

The title G_C_N_P pays homage to four pioneers of video and media art — Dan Graham, Peter Campus, Bruce Nauman and Nam June Paik — whose explorations of video feedback, perception, time and the viewer's presence helped redefine the relationship between image, space and audience.

In rear mirror, the viewer does not simply encounter images of the past. The viewer becomes visible through them.