Cinema 81 is a model of a screening room intended to give the viewer an unprecedented experience in film reception. The project, which only exists in the form of an architectural model, is essentially based on the properties of semi-transparent and semi-reflective mirror-screen which replaces the traditional opaque movie screen. The mirror-screen placed on an angle in the corner of a modern building at the intersection of two busy streets; the movie theatre is located on the ground floor and its façades on the street are fitted out with large windows.

Cinema 81 offers two possibilities: the viewer is either seated in the movie theatre or walking by the semi-transparent façades on the street outside. The screen is visible in either case. The set-up also plays on two different times, each of which implies particular levels of perception for the viewers and the passersby: when the film is projected, the theatre is completely dark; when the screening is over, the lights go on.

The side façades are made of a material which allows viewers seated in the theatre to vaguely perceive the outside environment, as well as the passersby, whose images get mixed with those of the film (without sound), generating a contamination between fiction and reality. The passersby, meanwhile, can not only see the reversed image of the projection but can perceive on the other side of the screen, which functions like a two-way mirror, the viewers frozen in their seats with their eyes fixed on the screen. When the screening is over and the lights go on, the situation is reversed: viewers are confronted with their own images and those of their neighbours in the movie theatre which are reflected on the mirror-screen and the side façades. The outside environment and the passersby are no longer visible. The passersby are then encouraged to look through the side windows and into the movie theatre, thus removing themselves from the street environment.

In this way, Cinema 81 invites everyone to experience successively the roles of viewer and actor and consequently, to become aware of the implications of the classic movie set-up which functions in such a way that viewers lose consciousness of their own bodies and the outside environment through a psychic process of identification with the film.  The principle of reflection, which Graham uses in many installations, here allows viewers to question the architectural structure of a movie theatre and observe the behaviours of the other viewers who are there. Ultimately, the individual becomes aware of belonging to the group which shares this urban space – the movie theatre – a symptomatic place of mass culture.

Frédérique Baumgartner

Translation  Miriam Rosen