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Cardboard boxes are clustered together and stacked on top of one another across the space. Some stand alone, including one cheekily located on a ledge halfway up the back wall of the Lilian Baylis Studio. An odd assortment of objects nestle among the boxes: a kettle, a hotplate, a bell, a mirror, a silver skull of the kind you might find in those annoyingly colourful shops full of unnecessary, cutesy accessories. In the centre of the space three upright white panels form a large screen for, I assume, video projections.

This assumption, based the program note that Daniel Linehan’s Gaze is a Gap is a Ghost employs video cameras, turns out to be correct. The video projector flicks on, and the camera moves slowly away from a wall. As more details come into focus, it becomes clear that the space in the video is the same space we are in. A performer steps out from behind the screen, walking slowly backwards, and the two events connect: the video gives the performer’s spatial perspective, a ‘performer’s-eye view’, if you will.

Gaze is a Gap is a Ghost plays with internal and external viewpoints, the visible and the invisible. It prompts us to challenge what we think we know based on what we perceive by changing the way we perceive it. I took a long time to warm up to this work, as the initial relationship between the live performers and the video was too straightforward to engage my curiosity. But Linehan does not rush things. The complex structures of viewing and knowledge-processing that he sets up need time to establish themselves and seep into the audience’s viewing consciousness. Only then can they be played with, distorted, and broken down effectively. By the end of this hour-long work I appreciated how well-paced it is, and I suspect that it needs all the time it is given.

It quickly becomes clear that the video footage is not live; in the video, the projection screen is blank and the house seats are empty. There are also moments when the three performers are not completely in sync with the video, either in terms of timing or in physical details, such as the direction of a head. However, the blatancy of these first discrepancies suggests intentionality and as such the more subtle divergences, rather than seeming like failures to sync up, add a layer of intrigue. As these moments suggest, the relationship between the live performers and the technology is not as straightforward as it initially seems. The video’s viewpoint switches from performer to performer. At times it becomes disembodied, or actively rebels against the three performers. At other times there is a conversation between the live performers and the recorded, projected versions of themselves. The interaction between the virtual and real bodies in the space is sometimes playful and humorous, at other times threatening.

Rhythm drives this work, both in its overall progression and in individual slices of its layered structure. Simple voice rhythms are shouted, sung, and passed back and forth between the performers and their virtual counterparts. They are simple, yet satisfying, especially as more layers are added and the complexity of the work increases.

The parallel video world, sometimes overlapping with our live experience and sometimes diverging from it, is especially interesting as it relates to the physical objects. As the work progresses the space is revealed as a treasure trove; the objects initially visible are supplemented by others objects hidden or shrewdly-located among the cardboard boxes. It is the video that allows us to see and engage with them. Coins, a key, photographs, the contents of small wooden boxes: these are details which would never be seen from the audience’s vantage point. Mirrors feature prominently, which is only fitting in light of the work’s emphasis on the gaze, and add further viewpoints from which to consider the events that unfold.

In the program insert, Linehan states that he assumes his audience is intelligent. I appreciate this, and see evidence of this assumption here. The relationship between video and live performance, with all its overlaps, folds, and gaps, offers a three-way dialogue between the real, the virtual, and the imagined, where different sets of information can be mapped onto and against one another in manifold ways. Affect did not feature heavily in my experience of Gaze is a Gap is a Ghost; this was a work where I thought more than felt, and I left with a genuine appreciation for the work’s pacing, crafted intricacies, and measured intelligence – an impression that deepens as I continue to think about it.