Last month I took a trip to the ICA in London for a perfomance art experience titled 'The Rot of the Stars'.
The introduction to the event read "ROTS is a collaboration between Jo Fisher Roberts and Mark O Pilkington.
Jo is an artist with an interest in natural history and the grotesque,
currently working primarily in live art and installation. Trained at the
Slade School of Fine Art, Jo exhibits internationally and teaches
Natural History Illustration. Mark is a writer and experimental
musician; he also founded and runs Strange Attractor Press."
In reality the space in which one entered was quite otherworldly, or more literally under-earthly. The same kind of atmosphere as being below ground, in a cave, or Fogou or Souterrain. The darkness and light pulsating cocoon / womb in the center of the room the main visual focus. Aurally, washes of sounds at low level maintained and added to the visual signals and our olfactory sense was awakened by a mycelium fragrance created by fine fragrance perfumer Simon Constantine. Off the main room was a trip into the earth, within, enveloped, consumed in darkness and the slight glittering of light reflected diamonds as semi precious stones within.
When the performance began the shamanic channeling of the microbial took collective consciousness to an animistic universality, of which we all played a part. Our guide departed as if by magic, her purpose completed after a sunwise channeling with liquid fluency building layers of texture on a once dark dawn.
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