Here, there and everywhere
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| Boris Eldagsen selfportrait © + courtesy Boris Eldagsen |
The Rabbit Hole is a collaborative work by Berlin-based artist Boris Eldagsen and Dhaka-based artist Tanvir Taolad that will be shown at Bisous in Arles from July 4th to August 29th, 2021. To wonder about what the Rabbit Hole is is to wonder about existence itself. An immersive experience to connection between the deepness of our mind and the universe. As George Harrison once sang "life flows on within you and without you" and so the creativity of these two artists also flows, creating an experience that makes us question the limits of physics perceptible to the naked eye, helping us to make an introspective journey of personal discovery.
I had the chance of interviewing artist Boris Eldagsen, one of the creators of The Rabbit Hole. He defines himself as a photomedia artist who is investigating the unconscious mind. He only works at night with a minimal equipation and without digital manipulation, what makes his work even more fascinnating. Poetry, photography, videoart, philosophy, psychology...where are the real boundaries?
You work with photography, video, installations. What does art represent to you?
As a teenager, I wanted to understand. Life, myself, the world. I thought art and philosophy would provide the answers to my questions. Instead, I simply learned how to ask more precisely and to love questions we will possibly never find an answer to.
Today, I view life as a journey into time, space, and the human condition. Art is one way of describing to others how we perceive and understand this journey. Next to art, philosophy, psychology, and science are my favourite travel guides into the perception and understanding of life. I view my work as postcards from the mind, heart, and guts.
As a teenager, I wanted to understand. Life, myself, the world. I thought art and philosophy would provide the answers to my questions. Instead, I simply learned how to ask more precisely and to love questions we will possibly never find an answer to.
Today, I view life as a journey into time, space, and the human condition. Art is one way of describing to others how we perceive and understand this journey. Next to art, philosophy, psychology, and science are my favourite travel guides into the perception and understanding of life. I view my work as postcards from the mind, heart, and guts.
Symbolism is very present in your work, one could speak of a poetic metaphor, surrealism. Is reality in dreams, taboos, the unconscious?
Symbolism and Surrealism are both poetic ways of expressing the same thing: unconscious drives of the human condition. Most of us are ruled by forces we are not or not fully aware of. We are like blindfolded drivers behind the steering wheel of our lives. This is very fascinating to me.
Is reality in dreams, taboos, or the unconscious? What is reality? If you ask philosophers, they will be able to list a dozen theories, build on a dozen assumptions, from which non can be verified. Philosophically, I can also doubt that you, this magazine, the internet, and the world exist and that instead all is imagined by a single consciousness.
Let’s have a closer look at what dreams, taboos, and the unconscious could be and how they are linked:
Still today, it is debated what dreams are and what function they fulfil. Dreams could be a vomit of experience, ruminated by the brain to work more effectively and be prepared for upcoming dangers. They could be a memory aid, a way to clean up the cluttered mind, or simply a method to keep the brain active while we sleep. But for me, as an artist working with symbols, dreams are the language of the unconscious mind.
What is the unconscious? The unconscious is another controversial psychological term. Psychology stopped using this old-fashioned term, researchers focus on automatic and implicit functions to describe things that were previously attributed to the unconscious.
Again, for me, as an artist, it makes sense to return to C.G.Jung.
According to Jung, the collective unconscious is made up of a collection of knowledge and imagery that every person is born with and is shared by all human beings due to ancestral experience. Jung believed that the collective unconscious is expressed through universal concepts called archetypes. Archetypes can be signs, symbols, or patterns of thinking and behaving that are inherited from our ancestors.
I was fascinated by this idea because it implies that artists can tap into this collective unconscious, and thus be understood across cultures and time.
I give you an example: One of Jung’s archetypes was ‘The Shadow’, a part of the psyche that we rather not acknowledge. The shadow is an archetype that you can find in old Chinese wisdom (Chuang Tzu, ‘Flight from the shadow’, 300 BC), Sufism (Rumi, ‘The wound is where the light enters’ 13th Century), Zen Buddhism (Wabi-Sabi 14th Century), World Literature (R.L.Stevenson’s ‘Dr.Jekyll & Mr.Hyde’ 1886, Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’ 1891, Chuck Palahniuk’s ‘Fight Club’ 1996), Song Lyrics (Leonard Cohen, ‘Anthem’ 1992), Photography (Roger Ballen ‘Roger the Rat’ 2020) and, and, and…..
Taboos are cultural laws to govern behaviour within communities. They do not play a role in my art practice. I find it ridiculous to willingly touch taboos or avoid them. Also, as I want my work to be understood across cultures, I prefer to attach myself to universal archetypes than limit myself by local cultural rules. If viewers think that I have broken a taboo, they have not understood that this is not what the work is about.
How important is poetry in your work and what do you think of the value is given to poetry socially?
Poets are the poorest of writers, it is already tough to make a living from writing but close to impossible to make it from poetry. Still, it is the most intriguing form of written and spoken art to me. A poem is open, it invites you to react to it, to fulfil it in the understanding process.
I named two of my works THE POEMS and OTHER POEMS to oppose the mainstream in photography which is all about stories and storytelling. With most stories we are listeners and observers, stories are told to us. ‘Look, what happened somewhere else’ is the imperative of the work.
With poems it is different, they mainly knock at the door of our unconscious. Being a reservoir of our past experiences, the unconscious stores urges and feelings we have rationally no access to. Poetry has the power to open these doors, trigger emotions, and unlock memories. With poems, we are co-creators. ‘Look, what happened inside yourself while you looked at this picture’ is the imperative of the work. It is not ‘What does the artist want to tell us’, but ‘What does my reaction to the work wants to tell me?’.
Poets are the poorest of writers, it is already tough to make a living from writing but close to impossible to make it from poetry. Still, it is the most intriguing form of written and spoken art to me. A poem is open, it invites you to react to it, to fulfil it in the understanding process.
I named two of my works THE POEMS and OTHER POEMS to oppose the mainstream in photography which is all about stories and storytelling. With most stories we are listeners and observers, stories are told to us. ‘Look, what happened somewhere else’ is the imperative of the work.
With poems it is different, they mainly knock at the door of our unconscious. Being a reservoir of our past experiences, the unconscious stores urges and feelings we have rationally no access to. Poetry has the power to open these doors, trigger emotions, and unlock memories. With poems, we are co-creators. ‘Look, what happened inside yourself while you looked at this picture’ is the imperative of the work. It is not ‘What does the artist want to tell us’, but ‘What does my reaction to the work wants to tell me?’.
At the same time, most of your works look like paintings. What are your artistic references?
You are right, I found my early sources of inspiration mainly in the history of painting. I started my art practice as a draughtsman and got accepted to art academy because of my drawings. I wanted to become a painter, like most of my friends at the time. But they thought in colours and spaces and I in b/w and lines. It came naturally to expand my art practice from China ink drawings to b/w photography.
I do love Rembrandt Van Rijn’s light, the sublime of C.D.Friedrich, the otherworldiness of William Blake, the symbolism of Arnold Böcklin, the nightmares of Max Klinger, Odilon Redon, Alfred Kubin, the dreamworld of the Surrealists.
But there also have been some photographic and moving image influences like the shadows of Frantisek Drtikol, the poses of Brian Griffin, the humour of Anna & Bernhard Blume, the psychological approach of Roger Ballen, the transcendence of Bill Viola, the crazy wisdom of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Gesamtkunstwerk of Peter Greenaway, the absurdity of Roy Andersson.
Now you present The Rabbit Hole. Reference to Lewis Carroll? How would you describe this series?
THE RABBIT HOLE is an immersive photomedia installation that will be installed in Arles during the Rencontres festival. The location was leading to the title and the overall work. This is a unique made-to-measure installation, that was set up to create the highest synergy between location and work. The exhibition space is fascinating place. A huge staircase leads down to a windowless basement, which is split up into a large and a small room; next to the small room is a tiny staircase leading into a dead end I immediately had the notion of what Alice must have felt falling down the rabbit hole when I visited the location for the first time. Alice was led into the depths of the earth and beyond reality. Likewise, my collaborator Tanvir Taolad and I want to lead the viewer into a different, inner, timeless reality. “Going down the rabbit hole” is an idiom that describes this very well.
On your website one can read "I want you to have an immersive experience". Avoidance or introspection?
I do not understand your question. Are you asking if I want the viewer to either piss off (‘avoidance’) or surrender to the experience (‘introspection’)? I never had the illusion that my work can reach everybody. It reaches those who have already opened a window for art that is non-documentary, experimental, and poetic. So far, I have found this audience across age groups and cultural and religious borders. I showed my work in Europe, Arabia, Asia, and the Americas, to visitors with a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or other backgrounds. There seems to be something timeless, cross-cultural in it, that some people do understand.
One of your recent works is Posthuman condition, in which you show concepts like Plastic forest. Is your installation the expression of a fear of something future or of a reality that you already consider present?
‘THE POSTHUMAN CONDITION’ is a series of collaborative video works. It started with the Brazilian performance artist Kupalua, whose stage shows combine futuristic music, laser light shows, and latex prosthesis. She wears a buttplug with a mirror, that she uses to reflect laser light into the audience. The following work was a collaboration with Brazilian posthuman performer, Aun Helden, who creates full-body latex suits with new sexual organs to overcome sexual trauma.
'PLASTIC FOREST' was a collaboration with the Japanese artist CoCo Katsura. It is a contemporary form of Butoh, often translated as ‘Dance of Darkness’. It rose out of the ashes of post-World War II Japan as an extreme avant-garde dance form that shocked audiences with its grotesque movements and graphic sexual allusions, when it was introduced in the 1950s. Many people are still disturbed by the intensity and rawness of Butoh. Performers move awkwardly and slowly with shuffling steps, looking more like zombies than dancers.
For me, Butoh has strong links to the rise of Dada after WWI and the St.Vitus Dance, also known as the ‘dancing plague’, a phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion and injuries.
In Jungian terms, Butoh could be understood as an archetypal form of reaction to human trauma. And as our human condition will not change, the work is linked to the past, the future, and the present.
Future projects?
In August, I will exhibit another collaborative work, called ‘ORACLE’, at the Biennale in Schwabach. For centuries, Schwabach has been the European centre of gold leaf production. Since 1999, they have run a site-specific summer exhibition on the theme of ‘gold’. ‘ORACLE’ is a metaphysical tombstone frottage that turns the name of the famous dead into advice for the living. For the biennale, we have Friedrich Nietzsche, Albrecht Dürer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Oscar Wilde, Egon Schiele, Vincent van Gogh, Leni Riefenstahl, Nico and Jim Morrison, communicating from the beyond. Since 2009 I have been co-creating this work with Australian artist Natascha Stellmach, who got notoriously famous in 2008 for smoking the stolen ashes of Kurt Cobain in a spliff.
Last October and April, I developed two seasons of ‘Instagram Speed Talk’ with Podcaster Alexander Hagmann from ‘diemotive’. For Deutsche Fotografische Akademie, we talked about a variety of subjects related to the artistic use of photography. From this summer, we will do this on a regular basis, twice a month.
About dreams, could you explain a dream you had while sleeping?
I do not believe in deciphering dreams by handbook. Our mind is complex and by definition, symbols carry multiple meanings. Dream elements can correspond to different parts of the dreamer’s psyche as to situations or people in the objective world. If you dream about teeth and you seek advice in the handbooks, which interpretation do you follow? Teeth = power? = dishonesty? = success? = anxiety? It is as random as reading the horoscope in a daily newspaper.
I do believe that dreams tell us where we are stuck in our development, often compensating for our current, conscious attitude, which is in some way one-sided or incomplete. Dreams show us growth potential.
Instead of telling you a 1:1 dream I had, I will tell you two dream-related secrets.
I do love the half-asleep/half-awake trance state, when you lay in bed, put your conscious mind to rest, and suddenly - your unconscious mind pops out one creative idea after another. It is there, when, and where I develop most ideas for my installations. Trance is great!
One of my most treasured experiences was a self-experiment, where I handed myself over to a female ‘medium’ who professionally worked with trance and conjuring the dead. I had a list of my favourite artists, whom I wanted to ask ‘how to disappear completely?’. It was like playing Zen koans with ghosts. The medium put me into trance by light hypnosis, and something in my mind woke up: images just appeared, there was Nietzsche, Huxley, and others talking to me, answering my question. It was a crazy ride and there is not enough space in this interview to go into details. But it happened. I refrain from subscribing to an explanation: it could have been my projection, my mind going wild, the medium manipulating me, or spirits talking. For me, it was all of this, and none of it. I take it as another example that the human mind is more than what we currently understand or explain.
You are right, I found my early sources of inspiration mainly in the history of painting. I started my art practice as a draughtsman and got accepted to art academy because of my drawings. I wanted to become a painter, like most of my friends at the time. But they thought in colours and spaces and I in b/w and lines. It came naturally to expand my art practice from China ink drawings to b/w photography.
I do love Rembrandt Van Rijn’s light, the sublime of C.D.Friedrich, the otherworldiness of William Blake, the symbolism of Arnold Böcklin, the nightmares of Max Klinger, Odilon Redon, Alfred Kubin, the dreamworld of the Surrealists.
But there also have been some photographic and moving image influences like the shadows of Frantisek Drtikol, the poses of Brian Griffin, the humour of Anna & Bernhard Blume, the psychological approach of Roger Ballen, the transcendence of Bill Viola, the crazy wisdom of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Gesamtkunstwerk of Peter Greenaway, the absurdity of Roy Andersson.
Now you present The Rabbit Hole. Reference to Lewis Carroll? How would you describe this series?
THE RABBIT HOLE is an immersive photomedia installation that will be installed in Arles during the Rencontres festival. The location was leading to the title and the overall work. This is a unique made-to-measure installation, that was set up to create the highest synergy between location and work. The exhibition space is fascinating place. A huge staircase leads down to a windowless basement, which is split up into a large and a small room; next to the small room is a tiny staircase leading into a dead end I immediately had the notion of what Alice must have felt falling down the rabbit hole when I visited the location for the first time. Alice was led into the depths of the earth and beyond reality. Likewise, my collaborator Tanvir Taolad and I want to lead the viewer into a different, inner, timeless reality. “Going down the rabbit hole” is an idiom that describes this very well.
On your website one can read "I want you to have an immersive experience". Avoidance or introspection?
I do not understand your question. Are you asking if I want the viewer to either piss off (‘avoidance’) or surrender to the experience (‘introspection’)? I never had the illusion that my work can reach everybody. It reaches those who have already opened a window for art that is non-documentary, experimental, and poetic. So far, I have found this audience across age groups and cultural and religious borders. I showed my work in Europe, Arabia, Asia, and the Americas, to visitors with a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or other backgrounds. There seems to be something timeless, cross-cultural in it, that some people do understand.
One of your recent works is Posthuman condition, in which you show concepts like Plastic forest. Is your installation the expression of a fear of something future or of a reality that you already consider present?
‘THE POSTHUMAN CONDITION’ is a series of collaborative video works. It started with the Brazilian performance artist Kupalua, whose stage shows combine futuristic music, laser light shows, and latex prosthesis. She wears a buttplug with a mirror, that she uses to reflect laser light into the audience. The following work was a collaboration with Brazilian posthuman performer, Aun Helden, who creates full-body latex suits with new sexual organs to overcome sexual trauma.
'PLASTIC FOREST' was a collaboration with the Japanese artist CoCo Katsura. It is a contemporary form of Butoh, often translated as ‘Dance of Darkness’. It rose out of the ashes of post-World War II Japan as an extreme avant-garde dance form that shocked audiences with its grotesque movements and graphic sexual allusions, when it was introduced in the 1950s. Many people are still disturbed by the intensity and rawness of Butoh. Performers move awkwardly and slowly with shuffling steps, looking more like zombies than dancers.
For me, Butoh has strong links to the rise of Dada after WWI and the St.Vitus Dance, also known as the ‘dancing plague’, a phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion and injuries.
In Jungian terms, Butoh could be understood as an archetypal form of reaction to human trauma. And as our human condition will not change, the work is linked to the past, the future, and the present.
Future projects?
In August, I will exhibit another collaborative work, called ‘ORACLE’, at the Biennale in Schwabach. For centuries, Schwabach has been the European centre of gold leaf production. Since 1999, they have run a site-specific summer exhibition on the theme of ‘gold’. ‘ORACLE’ is a metaphysical tombstone frottage that turns the name of the famous dead into advice for the living. For the biennale, we have Friedrich Nietzsche, Albrecht Dürer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Oscar Wilde, Egon Schiele, Vincent van Gogh, Leni Riefenstahl, Nico and Jim Morrison, communicating from the beyond. Since 2009 I have been co-creating this work with Australian artist Natascha Stellmach, who got notoriously famous in 2008 for smoking the stolen ashes of Kurt Cobain in a spliff.
Last October and April, I developed two seasons of ‘Instagram Speed Talk’ with Podcaster Alexander Hagmann from ‘diemotive’. For Deutsche Fotografische Akademie, we talked about a variety of subjects related to the artistic use of photography. From this summer, we will do this on a regular basis, twice a month.
About dreams, could you explain a dream you had while sleeping?
I do not believe in deciphering dreams by handbook. Our mind is complex and by definition, symbols carry multiple meanings. Dream elements can correspond to different parts of the dreamer’s psyche as to situations or people in the objective world. If you dream about teeth and you seek advice in the handbooks, which interpretation do you follow? Teeth = power? = dishonesty? = success? = anxiety? It is as random as reading the horoscope in a daily newspaper.
I do believe that dreams tell us where we are stuck in our development, often compensating for our current, conscious attitude, which is in some way one-sided or incomplete. Dreams show us growth potential.
Instead of telling you a 1:1 dream I had, I will tell you two dream-related secrets.
I do love the half-asleep/half-awake trance state, when you lay in bed, put your conscious mind to rest, and suddenly - your unconscious mind pops out one creative idea after another. It is there, when, and where I develop most ideas for my installations. Trance is great!
One of my most treasured experiences was a self-experiment, where I handed myself over to a female ‘medium’ who professionally worked with trance and conjuring the dead. I had a list of my favourite artists, whom I wanted to ask ‘how to disappear completely?’. It was like playing Zen koans with ghosts. The medium put me into trance by light hypnosis, and something in my mind woke up: images just appeared, there was Nietzsche, Huxley, and others talking to me, answering my question. It was a crazy ride and there is not enough space in this interview to go into details. But it happened. I refrain from subscribing to an explanation: it could have been my projection, my mind going wild, the medium manipulating me, or spirits talking. For me, it was all of this, and none of it. I take it as another example that the human mind is more than what we currently understand or explain.
An interview by Juan Carlos Romero
Photo by Boris Eldagsen © + courtesy Boris Eldagsen
For further information about Boris Eldagsen please visit www.eldagsen.com
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