where do we go from here, a collaborative project of Natalia Janula and Sophie Mei Birkin, eimagines the holy well as a site where nature and mechanics converge in mythic and ecologi- cal dialogue. Charms and talismans, material and physical as- sets of personal and collective significance, have historically been brought to sites of water, as symbols of hope, faith and memory. Votive offerings are embedded within the material of the work speaking to the past, present and future. In perpetual motion, mechanically failing and futile, the well fuses material- ities - the natural, manmade and mechanical- to symbolically question human interventions in, and attempts to control, the natural world. The locus of our wishes and hopes for the fu- ture- can the well still function as a source of renewal?
2024
@janula._ and @sophie.m.e.i
The Fire @metamorphika.studio curated by @nazbalkaya @dis- playfever
documentation of LICHEN HUM’s performance and collective offerings to our well 🕳️
“𝙖 𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙪𝙖𝙡 𝙙𝙚𝙡𝙫𝙚 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙤 𝙛𝙚𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨, 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙𝙡𝙮 𝙨𝙪𝙗𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙨𝙘𝙖𝙥𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖 𝙧𝙝𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙢𝙞𝙘 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙 𝙤𝙛 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙖𝙣𝙨”
LICHEN HUM are an experimental electronic music trio consisting of Nia Fekri @niafekrix, Giulio del Lago @apri_goat and David Williams @ec_circ. Blending modular synthesis, sample manipulation and spoken word, LICHEN HUM weave surreal narratives and other-wordly soundscapes, channeling liminal sonic spaces through semi-improvisational performances.
where do we go from here, 2024
@nataliajanula and @sophie.m.e.i
The Fire @metamorphika.studio curated by @nazbalkaya @displayfever
In William Gibson’s short story ‘The Gernsback Continuum,’ a photographer is commissioned to document futuristic American architecture from the 1930s, only to find himself haunted by semiotic ghosts, bits of deep cultural imagery that have split off and taken on a life of their own. These spectres pursue him as he experiences hallucinations of a lost and perverted future, of a utopia that never came to be—movie marquees, fluted aluminum, chrome-tube chairs, white marble and burnished bronze collecting dust. In the continuum, there is no end, only an infinite feedback loop: infinite chaos, decay, and regeneration.
For over a decade, artist Glen LeMesurier has been occupying an abandoned industrial lot in Montreal’s Mile End neighborhood, gradually filling the space with imposing iron sculptures made with found scrap metal. Like a guerrilla gardener, LeMesurier spontaneously plants his works throughout the otherwise desolate lot, alongside chestnut trees, lilac trees and white sweetclover, symbolically and literally purifying the soil. LeMesurier’s illegal occupation of the site led the city to designate it as a protected green space, the Twilight Sculpture Garden. Walking through the garden or sitting on one of its wrought iron benches is to be presented with secret ruins such as those in Gibson’s Continuum: hard evidence of the human near-dystopia
we live in, a utopian restructuring of industrial waste. By nature, the sculpture garden is an open space that invites experimentation and contemplation, that blurs the lines between growth and decay. In this context, sixteen artists have been invited to occupy the lot while considering its connection to Gibson’s short story: the legacy of modernity, the spoils of late capitalism, the fragments of raw technological enthusiasm. The works presented in the exhibition are their own semiotic ghosts—a cell phone made of incense, a plastic bottle with lancet arches, a cultural icon immortalized in clay.
Ether permeates from the elegant alchemy of nothing
and everything at
the same time. It’s like a silent stream
of consciousness filtering through a crashing cosmic
wave.
It’s stillness, yet it’s
the very thing that makes all
movement and life possible. The Latin root is
aether, which means “the upper pure, bright air.”
Ether was
originally a scientific term for what 19th century physi-
cists called “the fifth element”
a substance that was said to fill all space and make up
all bodies.
Picnic
“Come closer,” she said to the snake. Tongue flicking, the snake
moved to ss-sss-ss towards the slick and scaly Goddess. Their picnic was formed of turbulent material, so the snake picked a path with care, navigating that which had been gathering in a time before time. Her utterance might have been lost between one epoch and another, but feeling beyond words, the snake registered an imminent potential resonating within the Goddess’ command. The eternal void was slippery with change, and there was so much motion in it; seas of chaos laughed, glittering as the formless waters churned. Amidst this hung an egg, still and perfect. The Goddess, a fish of great wisdom, watched as the final guest slithered to join them. She wondered if she had wel- comed the one who could sustain the patient embrace required to release the multitudes focused inside her egg, but that is quite another story. “To health, to life, now let us begin.”
Hannah Blows
