In Mirror Improvisation (2005) we first see Joan Jonas at a low table with props, seemingly filmed as ad hoc documentation of a prior performance. She is in silhouette against a large projection that is playing the film we later cut to in this exact work. A game of tautology from the beginning, we then get a full view of the displayed work, which entails the close crop of a fish-eyed mirror. In its reflection, we see two women in tutus and summer dresses start on a ramshackle construction. In the frame, we also see other mirrors positioned at angles, a camera on a tripod and a plethora of objects and materials available for the two protagonists to use in their task. The construction takes multiple forms and moves through various orientations while an accompanying piano composition compliments the action with a jaunty, at times discordant melody. We get varying degrees of interaction with the people on screen. Sometimes they come to the lens and hold a mirror to our gaze in order to reflect it back at ourselves, at other times they are oblivious to our presence as they engage in each other, using props to interact. This is a work about construction. Construction in a physical sense but also as an allegory for how images are made, how perception is gained, and how meaning itself is constructed, too. All the apparatus of such an endeavour is there; mirrors, cameras, people, a place, time and material. Meaning is being made and determined in real-time, and we are located as an inseparable and implicated part of the process.