Questioning the mimetic character of art, on the one hand, and the power and limits of creative imagination, i.e., the author\u2019s creation using words and images, on the other, this paper aims to show how, in selected literary and video artworks, the authors use the motif and \u2018the mechanism\u2019 of the mirror to \u2013 regardless of the author\u2019s oeuvre, origin, and the medium in which they create \u2013 send the same message: the viewer and the viewed (the sender and the recipient) do not stand in binary opposition, but mirror each other in a constant play between surveillance and introspection, spirituality and technology, the space of intimacy and the (counter)hegemony of (new) media. The paper analyzes and contextualizes Sylvia Plath\u2019s poem \u201cMirror\u201d from 1961, \u201cRaport stra\u017eara iz Pompeja\u201d [A Report of the Pompei Guard] by Vlado Gotovac, a poem published in his collection Osje\u0107anje mjesta [A Sense of Place] in 1964, and the most famous video work, i.e., the still-exhibited installation of \u2018the father of video art\u2019 Nam June Paik, titled TV Buddha, first exhibited in 1974. Bearing in mind Jakobson\u2019s language functions, the paper will try to show how in textual and audiovisual media artistic languages are foregrounded to send strong and constantly re-created messages to the recipient who becomes a co-author. The mirror serves as a motif and a tool\/mechanism to examine the sender\u2013message\u2013recipient relationship. Both roles of the mirror refer to the self-referential potential of art. Applying the methodology of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Derrida\u2019s poststructuralist idea of \u2018the signifier\u2019s transfer\u2019 (through \u2018skipping\u2019 the direct signified\u2013signifier relationship), the analysis will show the metamorphoses of the (lyrical) subject and the consequent jumps\/skips in the re-creation of the identity of the reader\/viewer, whereby art is reaffirmed as a space for play and pushes the boundaries of freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Questioning the mimetic character of art, on the one hand, and the power and limits of creative imagination, i.e., the author\u2019s creation using words and images, on the other, this paper aims to show how, in selected literary and video artworks, the authors use the motif and \u2018the mechanism\u2019 of the mirror to \u2013 regardless …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":236,"menu_order":0,"template":"","tags":[180,179,183,181,182],"class_list":["post-361","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-artistic-identity","tag-counterhegemony","tag-freedom","tag-mass-and-new-media","tag-reflections"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openpress.somevps.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openpress.somevps.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openpress.somevps.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openpress.somevps.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openpress.somevps.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openpress.somevps.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}