LaTurbo Avedon: Morning Mirror/Evening Mirror
Text by George Russell
Copy Editor: Ben Blavat
Like the bells in the tower of the Catholic school across the street from my apartment building, Sunrise/Sunset, an online series on the Whitney Museum’s website, signals the time of day. Both mark the vacillations of an absolute rhythm which, like the cycles of the moon, is so easily forgettable — seemingly irrelevant in the murky sameness of the remote work schedule. Like the title promises, the series pops up on the Whitney’s site at the astronomically indicated times (5:24 a.m. and 8:29 p.m. Eastern Daylight Saving Time, respectively, as of June 15th) and auto-plays a short video.
It is refreshing and grounding to experience something that you know is being seen synchronously by others, in the same reassuring way as the cheers and boos of neighbors across the alley watching a live broadcast game. The series’ easter-egg quality of playful secrecy and exclusivity to those who go out of their way to set an alarm or who happen to stumble upon it on the Whitney’s website at 5 a.m., make it feel like an in-the-know event or some natural wonder like an eclipse. Seven shuffled videos corresponding with sunrise and sunset are superimposed over every page of the Whitney’s website twice a day, for a few seconds, starting at the moment of sunrise and sunset, synced down to the second to coincide with the actual cosmic events. This series will continue on the Whitney’s website indefinitely.
LaTurbo Avedon’s Sunrise Mirror/Sunset Mirror seems to refer to the muddying of the border between lived and virtual spaces that so many of us have been inhabiting. Simulated sunlight casts shadows and creates glare, reflections, and lens flares as the “camera” flies through and circles overhead an imagined 3D-rendered interior complete with houseplants and desktop monitors. It is surreal and relatable, banal and uncanny, in keeping with the times. Avedon, described in their bio on the Whitney website as an “avatar and artist,” focuses on “non-physical identity” in their work, informed by video games and virtual reality. Described by some as a “virtual person,” Avedon, artistically concerned with the melding of physical existence and digital being, is a natural choice for this online series where the simulated environment shadows and augments the real. The interiors we see are spaces that they inhabit in their daily life: a virtual apartment for a virtual person. Mirrors are a specialty of Avedon — they are a recurring motif in their work, which includes the Unicode 13.0 mirror emoji. The mirror in Morning Mirror/Evening Mirror, according to Avedon, is meant to be both a reflection and a portal, showing us the world we inhabit even as it presents a new one beyond the physical limitations of our own, at once recognizable and strange.
