49 Years of Bad Luck

Superstition dictates that if you break a mirror, seven years of bad luck will follow. With the average life expectancy of a woman in the US being 79 years, it is expected that I have 49 years before I die. Seven broken mirrors equal 49 years of bad luck; bad luck for the rest of my life.

For this piece, seven mirrors of identical size (2x3’ each) are broken. All the broken pieces of each mirror are glued back together onto a sheet of white MDF in the original rectangular shape. The broken mirrors are laid flat on the ground, facing up, side-by-side. If the piece is installed at the base of a wall, the mirrors should be lit from above so that a fractured light is reflected on the wall.

There’s a common superstition that a reflection in a mirror represents the projection of a soul out of the body. It’s believed that when one breaks a mirror their soul is broken along with it. The soul, so angered at being hurt, exacts seven years of bad luck in payment for such carelessness. The Romans were the first culture to make glass mirrors, and the seven years of bad luck was based on their belief that life renewed itself every seven years. In some cultures, the breaking of a mirror was thought to presage a death in the family within the year. This association of mirrors with death is common in folklore, and stems from the belief that the soul could become trapped in the mirror.

June 29th, 2055

This is a star map for the estimated night of my death—an image of a sky that doesn't exist yet. Maybe it’s one we’ll never see, considering how quickly light pollution is making stargazing impossible. This is what the sky would look like the night I am expected to die, 49 years from now.

This piece keeps changing forms. At first I wanted it be a photograph, a 36x48" C-print that would have the look of an astronomy photograph like the ones taken from an observatory's giant telescope. But it felt too flat, so I thought about a light box, something about the same size as a photo but where the stars’ glow would really be emphasized. But I didn't want the light box to look much different from a framed photograph, and a traditional light box would have looked too industrial or commercial for what I was going for. The solution I came up with was to mount fluorescent light fixtures to the wall, and then have a double glass frame hanging over it. In the frame is a sheet of black paper with pin holes representing the stars. But the scale still bothers me. It’s too much of a window or a poster. It should be bigger. I started to think about using the entire ceiling as the sky from that night. So now I’m thinking this piece should be an installation in a blackened room with a drop ceiling, and the entire ceiling would be like a light box, with a fluorescent light source behind it and pinholes for stars. I would love to make that piece; it’s the kind of piece that could be a whole show, the whole space.

In the meantime, I want to make another version. This one would be a slide projection on the ceiling of the stars. I bought a periscopic lens for it. It would be the same slide projected throughout an exhibition, and eventually the image would burn out and the night sky would disappear and fade and turn to white, which mimics what is happening to the real night sky. This gradual dissolution of the starry sky is such an important part of the piece for me and the idea would really come across in this version. This piece is about the future and our desire to believe that we can predict it. Wanting to predict the future is inevitably linked to dealing with our own mortality. I know nothing for certain of my future except that I’m going to die. We can predict the stars, and the stars can predict the future, but the stars are disappearing.

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When you put your head into the aquarium or your ear to the glass of the aquarium you can hear the heartbeat of a whale. A whale heartbeat can be detected underwater from up to two miles away. This sculpture is in some ways a model, a proposal for a piece that would eventually be installed in a larger body of water, like a swimming pool.

Click here to hear a rough cut of a whale heartbeat recorded by a hydrophone, this is not the final version, but it gives an idea what the piece will sound like.

Blue Whale Heart

This is a photograph of a clenched fist printed to the size of a blue whale heart. A clenched fist is a symbol of militancy, strength, or unity, and is also the size of a human heart. The blue whale heart is the largest heart that has ever existed on planet earth.

I’m not sure I want this to be a photograph anymore. I think this piece needs to have more transformation in it. I’ve thought about silkscreening the fist image onto a mirror, and the mirror would lay flat on the ground, spotlit. The reflection from the mirror would project the image of the fist onto the wall, and it’s this reflected image that would be the size of the blue whale heart. Another possibility is to have a free-standing cut-out of the fist to human scale that is spotlit with the shadow cast on the wall the size of the a blue whale heart.

Bird Call

This piece was inspired by an image I found in a 1965 edition of the Audubon Nature Encyclopedia that shows how kissing the back of one's hand is a popular method of attracting birds. Such a magical outcome to such a dumb yet romantic gesture stuck with me, but I didn't know what to do with it. Recently, I used a computer to make this small collage of birds flying around a woman's head as she kisses her hand. I love this image; it's what I wish the Audubon illustration was. Maybe that's a project in itself: flipping through the nature encyclopedia and remaking the illustrations the way I dream they could be. I like how in my version the woman looks carnivorous—like she's chewing on an amputated hand more than she's kissing it. There’s something a little Snow White and a little predatory at once. She also looks like my mother.

I think this body of work will turn into a couple videos about attracting birds. In one, a woman will kiss the back of her hand until birds appear. For practical purposes, I’ll probably shoot in reverse; the person will initially be covered in birds that will fly away as she starts kissing her hand. The other will be of a talking starling saying, "Give me a kiss." Starlings have diverse and complex vocalizations, and are known to imbed sounds from their surroundings into their own calls, including car alarms and human speech.

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This video must be watched from beginning to end. Focus on the black dot in the center. To begin, first click the image, then click the arrow.

I just made this video and I’m so excited about it! It was born out of a very frustrating failed sculpture. The sculpture was this tube that you looked into, and at the bottom was a strobe light that was supposed to flash the image of a rainbow onto your eye. So, looking into the tube would be a blinding experience, but when you closed your eyes and looked away you would see a rainbow. The image on the strobe had to be the negative of a rainbow so that the afterimage would be a positive. It didn't work—the piece just blinded you and didn't leave a rainbow. But then I decided I would make a film that uses the after-image effect. I think this video may eventually become a projected film; I’m not sure.

Esperanto Flag as an After-Image

This will be a flag hung flat on the wall. It will either be made of fabric, like a real flag, or be a poster-sized, ink on paper print. It will be a red flag with a red, five-pointed star in a grey square in the corner. These are the inverse colors of the actual Esperanto flag.

When you stare at an image for 30 seconds and then look at a blank wall or a white surface, you see an afterimage, where the colors register as inversions (for example: a red image makes a green after-image). After staring at this piece and looking away, a viewer will see the Esperanto flag as an optical illusion. Much like Esperanto's utopian dream of world peace, the after-image is just an illusion.

Esperanto, an obsolete artificial international language, (the word means "hope") was meant to unite mankind under one common form of communication. The green in the Esperanto flag represents hope, the five-pointed star represents the five continents, and white stands for peace.

In the artwork the colors are opposite from the Esperanto flag and, consequently, its meaning is opposite. Traditionally, red in a flag represents bloodshed and revolution. The viewers’ initial association with my flag will thus be with violence and revolution, but it is only as they turn away that a symbol for hope and peace will float intangibly in the air.

Emilie Halpern has an upcoming solo exhibition at Anna Helwing Gallery, Los Angeles, in 2008.