Video installation for 1 projector
49.40 min. (loop)
PAL – color - stereo
orig. version: English

Camera: Koen Theys
Text: ‘William Wilson’ by Edgar Allan Poe
Voice: Sandy Notman
Sound: Yves Demey
Casting: Hai-Chay Jiang
Editing: Koen Theys
Realisation & production: Koen Theys
Co-production: Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds – MDD Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

collection Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (B)

private collection, Bruges (B)

The work is a dramatised recording of a performance, put up during the opening of an exhibition in the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle. Theys (who has a twin brother himself) had asked some eighty identical twins to mingle with the public that was present at the time, and behave as normal visitors to an exhibition would. Slowly the camera scrutinizes the faces of these twins, as well as the faces of the visitors, looking around in amazement, amused at times, and, in some cases, totally bewildered. The title is a reference to a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, in which the character of William Wilson runs into somebody one day with the same name, who was born on the same day as he was, and, on top of that, looks just like him. Accompanying the images, a rancid male voiceover whispers the story, straight into your ears, as it were.

“… Koen Theys is very interested in his work in doubling and subverting manners of seeing and being seen…”
Edith Doove - catalogue ‘(In Search of) the Perfect Lover’

Entire article (NL) (EN)

“… Something similar has happened with Edgar all Poe. There are two writers who carry this name, an American one and a French one…”
Hans Theys - Nieuw Zuid #13 - 2005

Entire article (NL) (FR)

“Frank and Koen Theys are both artists. But they are also twins, and that’s why they present work in the show ‘Family Affairs’ in the Palais des Beaux-Arts….”
Eric Adams – BrusselXL

entire article (NL)

Installation view