“the steps a man takes, from the day of his birth to the day of his death, trace an inconceivable figure in Time. The divine intelligence perceives that figure at once, as man’s intelligence perceives a triangle. That figure, perhaps, has its determined function in the economy of the universe…” (Jorge Luis Borges)

Start the machine up and the pictures spin just about fast enough for us to assemble the passing images into a simple repetitive semblance of motion but slow enough for us to be able clearly to see the artifice that lies at the heart of all narrative.

The Mutoscope’s mechanism seems to operate at the point where the temporal X–axis of the movie crosses the spatial Y–axis of the print, transforming the multiple into the sequential. It produces a loop of behaviour that is the inconceivable figure in Time that Borges describes.

Simon Lewandowski’s works are not reconstructions or objects of nostalgia. His Mutoscope is a kind of laboratory apparatus for metaphysical investigation.