Why do people hate mirror dwellers?

Exhibition, July 26–31, 2025, Aula, AdBK Munich, Akademiestraße 2–4, 80799 Munich

Dwelling (v.) is liv­ing in a spe­cif­ic place. In tech­nics, dwelling is the reg­u­lar­i­ty of paus­ing slight­ly with­in mechan­i­cal motion. This year’s con­tri­bu­tion of the Emergent Digital Media class to the annu­al AdBK Munich exhi­bi­tion refers to ‘mir­ror dwellers’, a term used in vir­tu­al online sub­cul­tures.

An upshot of vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) plat­forms such as VRChat; vir­tu­al mir­rors are reflec­tive sur­faces which allow users to sur­vey a mir­rored reflec­tion of their avatar, along­side oth­er users in par­al­lel. They also reflect the avatars’ world space, pro­vid­ing a con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion for their ani­mat­ed VR body. VR worlds con­tain mir­rors intend­ed for sur­vey and social­iza­tion. Meanwhile, online-forums like Reddit got crowd­ed with heat­ed dis­cus­sions about mir­ror dwellers – avatars who end­less­ly watch their ani­mat­ed mir­ror reflec­tions. 

The exhi­bi­tion set­up pro­pos­es a recur­sive sit­u­a­tion – the glass dis­plays are con­struct­ed in a way that places observers in a posi­tion of dwelling to the art­works.

The mir­ror dwellers’ still­ness dis­rupts a log­ic where every­thing must be use­ful, effi­cient, and fast. Mirror dwellers let time pass with­out pur­pose or out­put, and that makes them sus­pi­cious. In a cul­ture obsessed with momen­tum, sim­ply not keep­ing up is enough to be in the way.

The com­mon­ly devel­oped exhi­bi­tion con­sists of media instal­la­tions, screens and sculp­tures that refer to real, to vir­tu­al, and to data worlds.

With works by:

Andrej Arpád Ambroz, Andre Bagh, Sofian Biazzi, Kristina Cyan, Vincent Entekhabi, Ilinca Fechete, Timothy Hammer, Yena Kim, Anja Lekavski, Angelika Lepper, Naho Matsuda, Lisa Meinig, Mira Schienagel, Gent Selmanaj, Vasilii Vikhliaev