Antisuperstition

Hristo Kolev-Christobel

Assuming the discovery of fire is one of humanity’s first scientific achievements, one could see how the idea of dual use propagates throughout human history as an immutable part of every newly discovered “superpower”. Even the pettiest of flames contains the potential for massive destruction. On the other hand, inside the human imagination, that very same flame receives a different connotation and shines as a symbol of hope, light and warmth. It would be very hard indeed to imagine the idea of a flame without the idea of rays of light. All darkness is intuitively perceived as a sign of harm and danger. That dissonance between the way the external and the internal worlds work often leads to inept projection of inner psychological principles into the outside world. A superstition is born!

The installation is an effort in creating real magic. It manifests into reality from a fantasy through the tools used in a visual editing software until it reaches the material plane,  editing colors on the physical body of the observer along the way. It is composed as a cross (a reduced mandala with antagonistic symbols in its opposite corners) formed by the visual horizontal and the audible vertical, with the low audio frequencies projected onto the ground and the high frequencies onto the ceiling. The metaphors for the transparent science and the dark superstition are reflected into each other through the geometrical reflections from one focus of the ellipse to the other. The installation produces a bright plasma and a dark antiflame which devours light inescapably in its volume. In this way, that homogeneous mixture of Jungian psychology and spectroscopy crystalizes into a material neo-alchemical allegory. The beholder is ritualistically summoned to let go of all superstitions in order to recognize the beautiful complexity of the reality standing in front of their eyes, the reality of the magical quantum mechanical principles incorporated in the dark antiflame.