Athanor
(in alchemy: furnace used to create physical, mystical, and moral transformations)
active sourdough, tent, satin, extended heart beat audio
Artifex gallery — 2019, Vilnius, Lithuania
Performative space installation is an allusion to the bread oven and womb, conceptually - a space where transmutation occurs (Athanor alchemic furnaces, womb).
Stories incarnates to the shifting fabric of sourdough, the physical structure creates skin for transformation. A continuous, flowing stream. Containing the whole chain of past events which becomes the basis for possible future ones. However, the current moment is the most important, it is „responsible“ or a structure will be able to accept a new cycle.
Processes in these spaces (womb, furnace) are fixed and cyclic - archetypal. Strong feeling of isolation, la petite morte and disorientation. Primal fear, desire to return to the past utopias (like the Garden of Eden). Artist and sourdough works with the same principle as fermentation: it doesn’t provide a fixed artefact, installation is limited to the present, events arise from each other is constantly becoming and disappearing, is therefore performative. There is a conscious and unconscious relationship between observer and material, between observer - sourdough, artist as a director and sourdough as an actor.
In the present, the focus is on processuality, the final result does not exist due to the nature of matter that constantly changes.
Installation doesn’t provide a fixed artefact, is limited to the present, events arise from each other is constantly becoming and disappearing, is therefore performative.
A moment of pulsating fascination in the body. The final step of fertilization is not questioned. This space almost fanatically hyperbolizes and tries to capture that „now“, until the end of the cycle to start a new cycle.