Emmanuel Van der Auwera
Medusa 12.14.12, 2025
Square 33.2-inch LCD screen, polarization filter, plexiglass, tripods, HD video, color, sound, 15 min 30 sec
190 x 100 x 100 cm
74 3/4 x 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in
74 3/4 x 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in
Edition of 3 plus 1 AP
Copyright the artist & Harlan Levey Projects
“Medusa 12.14.12” incorporates a quote from conspiracy theorist and disgraced professor James Tracy, who, citing media theorist Walter Lippmann, states: ‘The only feeling a person can have of an event...
“Medusa 12.14.12” incorporates a quote from conspiracy theorist and disgraced professor James Tracy, who, citing media theorist Walter Lippmann, states: ‘The only feeling a person can have of an event they have not experienced is their mental image of that event.’ This idea encapsulates much of Emmanuel Van der Auwera’s inquiry, as he explores how mental images are shaped around widely publicized tragedies like the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
The VideoSculpture unfolds from the wall, its images floating like holograms. Across multiple screens, similar footage plays with subtle variations, creating visual loops that resist easy comprehension. Real content is interwoven with manipulated or AI-generated images, creating a deliberately disorienting space between fact and fiction. Documentary photographs of school shooter drills are extended into uncanny videos, resembling the frozen poses of the 2016 “mannequin challenge.”
James Tracy, who was dismissed from Florida International University after demanding that Pozner prove his child’s death, appears throughout the piece as a kind of spectral commentator on media literacy. Van der Auwera juxtaposes Tracy’s claims with Renaissance paintings that shaped long-standing cultural expectations of grief.
The artist also engages directly with the visual tactics of these online truthers. In the conspiratorial videos he references, self-styled digital detectives dissect photos and footage with the obsessive eye of an art historian, covering them with arrows and annotations. The fractured surfaces of the VideoSculpture mirror this forensic impulse, offering a visual metaphor for how images are picked apart, shared, and warped into new—and often dangerous—versions of truth.
Amid this visual overload, Van der Auwera anchors the work in the voice of Leonard Pozner, who reflects on the emotional toll of the tragedy: not only the loss of his son, but the harassment he endured from “truthers”, including Tracy. Pozner’s testimony cuts through the haze of visual excess, grounding the work in personal reality.
The VideoSculpture unfolds from the wall, its images floating like holograms. Across multiple screens, similar footage plays with subtle variations, creating visual loops that resist easy comprehension. Real content is interwoven with manipulated or AI-generated images, creating a deliberately disorienting space between fact and fiction. Documentary photographs of school shooter drills are extended into uncanny videos, resembling the frozen poses of the 2016 “mannequin challenge.”
James Tracy, who was dismissed from Florida International University after demanding that Pozner prove his child’s death, appears throughout the piece as a kind of spectral commentator on media literacy. Van der Auwera juxtaposes Tracy’s claims with Renaissance paintings that shaped long-standing cultural expectations of grief.
The artist also engages directly with the visual tactics of these online truthers. In the conspiratorial videos he references, self-styled digital detectives dissect photos and footage with the obsessive eye of an art historian, covering them with arrows and annotations. The fractured surfaces of the VideoSculpture mirror this forensic impulse, offering a visual metaphor for how images are picked apart, shared, and warped into new—and often dangerous—versions of truth.
Amid this visual overload, Van der Auwera anchors the work in the voice of Leonard Pozner, who reflects on the emotional toll of the tragedy: not only the loss of his son, but the harassment he endured from “truthers”, including Tracy. Pozner’s testimony cuts through the haze of visual excess, grounding the work in personal reality.