There were sentences written in light to read on the walls of one fitting room of Thatchers – a leading designers clothing store. Poetic descriptions of fictional female characters, they invited the reader to identify with them.

‘Like a…’ created its effect through the suggestive power of these descriptions. The phrases were lines taken from advertising copy for perfumes, mixed with quotations from literature – such as Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina and Penthesilea.

A shopper stepping into the front of the mirror would find a white coated wooden box standing on the floor of the fitting cabin. The box contained the slide projector projecting images back-to-front onto the wall opposite the mirror.The projection box hid a metal sensor. Whenever the sensor got into touch with an item made of metal – like a zipper, a belt-buckle or knobs of metal – it triggered a change of slide. A new image was projected onto the wall.

Intervention at thatchers

With special thanks to Thomas Mrozek and Elisabeth Helene Simon for their kind support.

‘Like a…’, slide projection, projection area 70 x 70cm, 40 slides,4 x 4 cm, b/w, 1 Kodak carousel, 1 control unit, 1 metal sensor, 1 belt with a buckle of metal, 1 projection box coated white, 47 x 47 x 47 cm.

Berlin 2006.thatchers, Hackesche Höfe Hof IV, Rosenthaler Straße 40-41, 10178 Berlin