CHEMICAL FLOWER, 2014

HD Video, single-channel, colour, sound, duration 00min 40sec.  Videostills

Synopsis:

"I'm trying to make whatever is divine within me rise back up to whatever is divine in the universe" (Plotinus).

The technique of ecstasy still appears today in many religions and cultures throughout the world. All religions show great interest in the “holy ecstasy” and each based on her own manifesto follows a different path for its achievement. One of the oldest is the exercise with the breath, the sound technologies, dance and other forms of movement, social isolation, fasting, sleep deprivation, meditation, prayer, the use of phychotropic substances and other spiritual practices, that act out the holotropic states of the mind. The work "Chemical flower" is a reference to Beckett’s "Breath" examining breath as an ecstatic process of the consciousness emerging beyond the limits of individuality and its unity with the whole. The video shows a peyote cactus breathing in and out, creating a virtual illusion.