UC Irvine

Effecting a Split is a video installation which was mounted as Alexandra (Sasha) Bergstrom-Katz’s thesis exhibition in 2018 in the University Art Gallery, at the University of California, Irvine. The project was an inquiry into the notion of a divided self. Utilizing research in psychoanalysis, visual cognition, film theory, performance studies, contemporary art, theater and magic, Bergstrom-Katz created a video that featured an isolated reenactment of the transformation scene from Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, paired with a borrowed magic trick entitled “The Transported Man” from both Christopher Priest’s novel The Prestige and its film incarnation of the same title directed by Christopher Nolan. The project explored psychoanalytic concepts (The Mirror Stage, Fort-Da, Suture, Splitting, etc.) and matches them with their narrative and filmic equivalents in an attempt to reveal the audience as the true subject of the project.