Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

Viewmaster by visual artist Laurent Liefooghe and choreographers Heike Langsdorf and Ula Sickle is a performance as well as an installation that shows a contemporary version of the renowned “Pepper’s ghost illusion”. In nineteenth century theatre, before the invention of cinema, this optic trick was often employed to make ghosts and spirits appear out of nowhere on the stage. This often thrilled and unnerved the public, to which the secrets of the trick were not unveiled. The essentially simple trick works as follows: the viewer and the performer are separated by a glass partition. Depending on the light, the glass is either transparent, mirroring or both at the same time. In the installation trail you can try out these optical effects for yourself. In the evening the trio will give a performance in the installation during which they blend illusion and reality in a visual game. The audience will be misled more than once.

Watch the Vooruit interview with the three artists or a movie about the installatie.