High Weirdness
with Rosanna Graf & Antonia Friesburger
Solaris Space Berlin, 2022
The title of this exhibition is a quotation from Erik Davis's incredible book High Weirdness (2019). Although I have been working through the lens of Philip K. Dick's "pink beam" moment for some time, his book truly formulates the notion of the weird and is kind of perfect in every way. Davis is such articulate thinker, talker, and loose goose. Thank you Erik Davis for your amazing podcast too.
Nota Flashback Tableau Vivant, 2022
Painted table, ceramics
A frequent reference throughout all my work folds back to two media events that occurred between the ages of 18 to 21 years old. The first was watching short film by Charles and Ray Eames called the Powers of Ten (1977) while I was stoned, at IMAX theatre. The second event was a reading an infectious comic by Robert Crumb, called The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick. In 1974, a beam of information was transmitted to Phillip K. Dick over an eight-hour period. This invading force took many names, one is the cosmic database he sometimes called VALIS which stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System.
The Powers of Ten short film collapsed the micro and macro scales into one level. This plays out in a peculiar visual language throughout my art practice. Obsessive pattern is one way to depict this collapse. In the work created for High Weirdness, it is visible in a painted table, that sits inside a table, that displays many smaller tables. Worlds within worlds. The large table is ornamental, drippy and wonky. It has been painted with the visual nota from a grimoire – a book of instructions in the use of magic, especially one containing spells to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, deities, and demons. The drawings on the table are copied from a grimoire known as the Ars Notoria. The manuscript is dated from 1225 A.D and it is kept in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. It was used to aid in the rapid learning of subjects such as grammar, rhetoric, music, philosophy, geometry and theology. Through prayers and studying the drawings, one can rapidly learn these subjects, through summoning angels. One must study the drawings to be transmitted the information. This links back to VALIS.
When I locate a new area of fascination or research, I must make art about it, so as to understand more, to unfold it. The installation is ceremonial, using the technology of high magic so I can rapidly learn about the religion of Gnosticism.
I use the ceramic figurine as a learning tool – the making of which involves an ‘alien voice’, because some other entity joins in on the creation. In surrealist techniques, the concept of automatism only touches painting, drawing or writing, however, I feel there is a vacuum of conversation around automatism in clay-making. The clay often leads the way, to what it wants to become. It is absolute High Weirdness when this happens.
The notion of an eerie animation (another of Davis's concept) appears throughout the figurines, like a puppet, the figures are embodied with animist life, living in a world that is not part of death or life, but somewhere in-between the veils. The figures of small female witches reference older, forgotten women in society who have secret immense power.
Photography by Rosanna Graf
