Cycle 3: Mirror, Mirror

Why are mirrors so discomposing?

Why is it disturbing to see how others might see you?

Why are other people dangerous?

Why does the usual dichotomy of seeing and feeling (I see only others but feel only myself) hinder empathy?

Why don’t mirrors help you see yourself?

Why does nobody really believe they’re the same person as the one they see in the mirror?

Why is the inside-self divided from the outside-self?















Why is your own reflection so alien to you?

Why is your reflection both truer and falser than your self-image?

Why does seeing your reflection threaten your sense of meaning?

Why do mirrors make the self a thing?

Why is the speechlessness of things so terrible?

Why do you both fear and envy the thereness of things?

Why do you confuse meaning with being?















Why do you associate mirrors with your face?

Why are you disposed to imagining yourself as your face more than your body?

Why is being confronted by the reflection of your face far more affecting than being confronted by the reflection of your body?

Why does the usual invisibility of your face to yourself determine your self-image?

Why does one tend to confuse the invisible self with the visible body?

Why do mirrors confound the imaginary and the real?

Why is every reflection of the self a memento mori?















Why do you only look at mirrors standing up?

Why don’t men use mirrors sitting down?

Why do women?

Why are women assumed to use mirrors more than men?

Why do mirrors play such a crucial role in the differentiation of genders?

Why do women have to be taught to be women and men to be men?

Why would civilization as we know it fall apart if women stopped being women and men being men?















Why do mirrors divide the self even as they multiply it?

Why do they shatter the self’s illusion of unity?

Why are mirrors considered narcissistic when they actually fragment the self?

Why does looking into a mirror sometimes feel like flirting with madness?

Why is the doubling power of mirrors both fascinating and terrifying?

Why do both mirror images and photographic images always have an undercurrent of the uncanny (though maybe of different sources)?

Why do photographs of your own reflection in a mirror seem to tell you something of the nature of the self?








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