Performer / Audience / Mirror is a performance. The work opens onto a reverse image which straightens up. Dan Graham appears. He speaks. Opposite him, the audience is seated on the ground. Behind him, opposite the audience is a mirror. The spectators can see themselves and Dan Graham simultaneously from the back and front. During the performance, the frame varies, from a narrow shot of the performer to a wide-angled shot of the group. The performer-mirror construction - although in complete contrast - is reminiscent of the perspective of Quattrocento. The mirror becomes a means of reintroducing the image. The audience has a choice between the illusion of the reflection and the reality of the performer. As Dan Graham writes, "Inasmuch as language intervenes, the mirror, a silent, visual device - the mirror is fixed and we can let ourselves be guided by our imagination -, can be in opposition to language which is a symbolic, social device." 1 Dan Graham describes the people present in the auditorium. The audience remains silent. He describes the gestures with the description assuming a certain degree of objectivity. It is, however, also the description of a person. In the same way, the audience by looking at itself in the mirror, is also an objective contribution, but the glance, on the surface, makes subjective choices. Dan Graham plays on this paradox. The performer's speech is spontaneous. The immediacy of the action is reminiscent of the impossibility of anticipating what is going to happen. This spontaneity brings the performer closer to the audience. The work is based on this search for a shared present, a desire to adhere as closely as possible to the present moment. Nevertheless, Dan Graham notes that, "everything points to the contrary. The position of the audience is different from mine, they can see that my description comes after the event, that my interpretation is different from theirs. When I describe them they can see themselves in the mirror and realise they are not quite as I described them. They can even influence one another by looking in the mirror, just as I can influence them by speech which orients their behaviour in a certain direction" 2.
Here the mirror appears as a tightening of the bond between spectator and performer, it diminishes and intermingles the limits between the performer-subject and audience-object. In the years to come, glass and mirror sculptures of houses were to develop these intentions by assigning to the spectator the role of the person who is watching and yet being watched. In 1974, Dan Graham gave a performance entitled Performer / Audience Sequence where, facing the audience, he described himself before describing the audience.

Dominique Garrigues

1 Dan Graham, Ma position. Ecrits sur mes oeuvres, Villeurbanne, Le Nouveau Musée - Institut / Les Presses du réel, 1992, P. 98.
2 Id.