Apophanista‽ 2013

 

In this short video piece, scenes from my childhood are played out in a tableaux involving my mother (the oracle), my father (a gangster) and myself depicting tragic and not so tragic incidents overshadowed by my mother's inherited use of ancient Kabbalistic (practical) magic and an obsessive consultation of Napoleon's Oraculum. The choice of actors and aesthetics enable me to detach from these memories that are far too personal to share literally. It is also an ongoing attempt to reconcile these past events by creating future encoded memories in my role as filmmaker. It is set to text from the Oraculum and Les Litanies de Satan by Baudelaire and visually encoded with rituals that hold clues to past work and events as well as a future feature length film.

 

Apophanista‽ is a made up title taken from the word, Apophany which is about seeing / seeking meaning from apparently meaningless information or data.

 

"The propensity to see connections between seemingly unrelated objects or ideas most closely links psychosis to creativity ... apophenia and creativity may even be seen as two sides of the same coin." Peter Brugger - Neuroscientist. " Apophany - A magical space between two continua - science and alchemy and creativity and madness." Mark McElhaw - Digital Alchemist, ArtHertz