highlike

Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion

Lightning Ride
“With Lightning Ride, it is now poles of technology, organics and mysticism that collide with  electricity as a connecting point. The video is produced from excerpts of “Taser Certifications”, a sort of ceremony authorizing in the United States the use of Tasers in the condition of being tased by someone else. Filtered with the Photoshop’s “oil painting effect”, slowed down and accompanied by a disturbing soundtrack, the succeeding images show us bodies and faces whose deformations and positions evoke a feeling of pain as well as a Christian ecstacy. Everything unfolds as if the miracle of electricity, symbol of the rationalization of the world, revived paradoxically an aspiration to transcendence, antipodes joining each other and disappearing in profit of a new map of possibilities.” (Sarah Ihler-Meyer)

Maria Guta and Adrian Ganea

Cyberia

Performance & live computer generated simulation

A postmodern fairytale, Cyberia takes place somewhere in a cold distant East, stretching between and endless imaginary realm and a vast physical space. It is a westwards journey towards a promised future with no arrival and no return. There is no here or there, only a twilight zone between a departure point and a simulated destination. Between digital video projections and a physical setting, using the mechanics of a video-game engine with a motion capture suit, Cyberia is the simulation of an endless pre-climax state where a performer and a CG avatar dance as one to the rhythms of an imaginary West. In a world oversaturated by digital data –mysticism and paranormal are as popular as ever. Emerging technologies are increasingly incorporated in a form of postmodern spiritualism, as Arthur C. Clarke points out: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

JOHN MCCRACKEN

ДЖОН МАК-КРАКЕН
约翰·麦克拉肯
ジョン·マクラッケン
STAR, INFINITE, DIMENSION, AND ELECTRON

John McCracken’s work embodies a threshold of physical matter and infinite mind/space. In his own words, this ‘character,’ of his work has been indefinable and difficult to write about as an integral whole. Typically referred to as one of the leading West Coast counterparts to the Minimalist regime of Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Dan Flavin, Sol Lewitt and Robert Bladen, McCracken’s work extends the architecture of Minimalism, complicates the surface of simulated or real machine production, and reflects a mysticism of transcendence.

John Tavener

We shall see Him as He is
”Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is”. the First Epistle of St John, Chapter 3 verse 2
Tavener converted to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977.[13] Orthodox theology and liturgical traditions became a major influence on his work. He was particularly drawn to its mysticism, studying and setting to music the writings of Church Fathers and completing a setting of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the principal eucharistic liturgy of the Orthodox Church: this was Tavener’s first directly Orthodox-inspired music

threeASFOUR

MER KA BA
Bahai dress

New York-based trio Gabi Asfour, Angela Donhauser and Adi Gil form the fashion collective threeASFOUR, which creatively explores the intersection between fashion, sculpture and mysticism through their creations. The Bahai dress was 3D printed in collaboration with Bradley Rothenberg for the “MER KA BA” collection, which finds its inspiration in the sacred geometry and tile patterns found in religious buildings across the world.