A new installation by Israeli artist Igor Revelis (aka Klone) explores the phenomenon of human memory and the fluctuating boundaries between the external and the internal.

The Christmas tree is decorated with a series of photo holograms, each showing the eyes of a St. Petersburg resident. As people walk by, an optical effect makes the eyes appear to alternatively open and close, depending on the angle they are viewed from. This visual game lies at the heat of Klone’s idea that the external and internal are interchangeable frames of reference: the observer is simultaneously the observed.

The human eye is a complex mechanism. At any one time it both projects and reflects, while absorbing information from outside. Klone has envisaged the Christmas tree as a kind of emotional anchor, a point of focus for the individual stories behind each person taking part in the project, as well as for the city’s collective memory.