Neverland

Christophe was a professional impersonator by accident- in 1982 he did an imitation of Jackson for friends at a party and afterwards the invitations quickly began. When the scandals broke 10 years later, of Jackson’s sexual abuse charges, the phone stopped ringing. Christophe was left with the excess, and absence, of his original- a body which had stopped producing. But Christophe”s body didn’t stop producing. Through his virtuosity as an imitator, he had become an after-life body, somehow more real than Jackson himself.

This situation lead Andros Zins-Browne to start his research into holographic projectors. In NEVERLAND, the viewer sees a body which is both real and unreal, moving as a three-dimensional image. Life-like, but not real. The real image of an unreal persona, as performed by a real-life imitator. The video is installed using a technique first developed in 19th century operas, called Pepper’s Ghost. Here, however, the off-stage body is replaced by a high-resolution projected image, and the large glass is replaced by an invisible plastic film, creating the effect of a completely free-standing, 3-dimensional image. A hologram.

(www.wpzimmer.be)