Single-channel video installation / 6 min / loop / silent / 2024

As early as 1935, Walter Benjamin observed that the “realism” of cinematic representation, in which “no part of the apparatus” is visible, is produced precisely through the apparatus’s “most intensive penetration into reality.” In other words, the cinematic illusion depends upon the erasure of every trace of its own construction — first and foremost, the apparatus itself, but also the film crew, the studio, the script, and the entire technological and material infrastructure behind the image.

Omnipotence of the Gaze examines and demystifies the camera as a supposedly “bodiless, intangible” entity by explicitly revealing the self-reflection of the “apparatus eye” on the surface of a mirror. The work turns the camera back toward itself, exposing the technological apparatus that normally disappears behind the seamless illusion of cinematic representation.