Hanna Schrage

We live encaved within language – verbal and visual – that forms what we perceive as ‘normality’. We navigate our everyday space as the facade of the system we live in. We have learned to read this facade in its systematic context. It presents us with a version of reality which confirms that which comforts us, which is needed to ‘preserve’ society, which feels ‘safe’. The facade is shiny and hard. It is almost impenetrable due to the forces holding it up and maintaining it. It glows in all colours and it makes us feel warm and fuzzy and safe. We recognise its verbal and visual ornaments. They refer to a world we know and understand. We internalise its rules and follow them instinctively. While grounded in this reality it is difficult to investigate and question the rules. Virtual reality offers a space in which these rules can be completely dissolved. Rather than only seeing the dissolution of normality in VR we can actually experience and feel it. The disorientation evoked by this experience enables us to reevaluate our environment, to become aware of the rules and limitations we accept as normal. The cloth installation which holds the VR gear connects the virtual and physical experience, blurring the line between what is ‘real’ and what is not. 

The Thin Layer investigates our personal window into the world, our personal reality into the virtual. The experience strips away layers of normality, removing points of reference until the viewer finds themselves in  a white space, at once agoraphobic and claustrophobic. A space without rules and absolute freedom but also without reference, comfort, a past or a future, a place the viewer cannot understand, measure by their experience, see through their own window.