I’ve always been a visually oriented person. It’s sort of like a weird omni-synesthesia I can’t really turn off. Taste, smell, sound, touch; it all turns into a mental image of colors, shapes, and often memories as well. Emotions are essentially complex polyhedrons that are often rippling with topographical peaks and troughs. I know, it’s wild in here.
There was a time in my life when I was unsure if this was normal, or if something was wrong with me. I learned to embrace it, and lean into it as I got older. It is one of the most important things that has led me to the strange landscapes I have found myself exploring with suspension and art.
While I am certainly a detail oriented person that appreciates a good amount of order in things, I am also a chaos monkey that greatly enjoys chaos and natural asymmetries. Visually, I find that most things tend to have an organizational system to them naturally; in art school they call this composition. When you start breaking the rules, and crossing over boundaries, you introduce chaos into the system, and you begin discovering strange stuff.
“Strange stuff” is my bread and butter in a lot of ways. Folks hanging from hooks, occult matters, psychedelic science fiction, moshing images with code, and the list goes on. What’s beautiful about the bizarre, the fringe, and the niche, is that rules are already obsolete from the beginning. Sure, there are rules to tying a knot, writing a function, grammar, etc; but what you do with these tools is the subject. If you are a creator, then your objective is to bring something into being. If you are creating something strange, then it is likely it needs to be free of “normal” constraints.
This year’s strange thing for Halloween is this collage of things I created and passed through some JavaScript I have been working on for a few months now. 50% of this was “I have no fucking clue where this is going” and the other 50% was “I know where the fuck this is going.” This seamless looping GIF is 100% better in full-resolution. Check it out (and maybe grab a copy) here: https://app.manifold.xyz/c/hallowed
You may not know what the subject is sometimes. And other times you may find yourself screaming internally at the difficulty of bringing a subject to life in a way that you absolutely NEED to. Get those fucking neural demons out however you can. Either way, you have to hold on long enough that you can navigate the worlds (or hells) inside of your mind. It may be tough to visualize a thought, or it may be challenging to solve a technical puzzle on the way to finishing a piece.
An idea, a solution, a realization; these are some of the destinations we are trying to arrive at along our creative journeys. I think the most amazing work happens right before we have epiphanies, or moments of clarity. The chaos allows you to take any and all possibilities into account at this time - you can add or discard anything you like in this alchemical process.
These are liminal spaces where anything can be anything.
Thoughts become physical objects you can move around in metaphorical rooms. Like furniture that just isn’t sitting right with you, you figure out the right arrangement, so that you can find your internal feng-shui. And when the flow is right, the best work starts coming out. It works vice-versa too: the human body is a fantastic topographical wonder that can even be shot as landscape photography.
The breakthrough moments are not always intense; sometimes it’s less of an explosive torrent through a portal, and more of a gentle release as your uphill trek ends, and you find a downward slope that’s easier on your brain.
Fuck, that is a LOT of esoteric stuff. Let me lay out some objective mental landscaping for you so we can escape all this obscurity. Here is a quick breakdown of one of my favorite creations.
Tether
This piece is called “Tether.” The bruja that is at the center of this piece is Jeanelle Mastema, of Virgo Rising. She is one of the most beautiful Virgos to walk the earth; her physicality, her mind, and her emotional energy are incomparable, and she has had some of the most immense impact on my journey through body suspension.
I created this piece in 2016, and after just over a decade of being into body suspension, it was the piece that let me find my favorite direction I have ever taken with suspension. It wasn’t just a cool set of shapes and ideas that made it possible; it was years of experience, and working with the right people that brought me to this moment with this powerful being.
When she came to NYC to be a part of this living sculpture I wanted to create with her, I had an idea of how I wanted to present beauty, power, and elegance. I wanted to present our shared occult paradigms with a geometric environment that not only complemented her energy and beauty, but also communicated a sense of liminality.
Floating through the detritus of unformed ideas and geometries in my mind, I focused on how I felt about directional power, about emotion as a driver, and about the importance of being able to set intentions with a clear mind. As I traversed all of the intensity between the sharp red angles of fiery emotion, and the soft blue curves of acceptance and giving in, the landscape began to take form as one that was a combination of straight lines as well as curved ones, all interconnected.
Everything tethered, just like our minds, hearts, and bodies.
I focused on the notion that she would not only be suspended within this interconnected web of rope and steel, but that it would be an adornment that exists to accentuate her inner power. Occult practices are unforgiving of missing balance; there is a give and a take to all systems, scientific or otherwise. In this case, this creation was not just there to hold Jeanelle safely, but also to be worn by her as a way to amplify who she is, and impress the sense of liminality on observers.
Visceral. Calm. Intensely in the moment. Heightened senses. A quiet moment. Loud visual impact. Low chromatic layout: colorful emotions suspended just long enough to allow mental thresholds their space.
And so, I broke through the liminal spaces with a clear set of ideas on how to create this vision I had of her in my mind. The way over the peak presented all the technical solutions to how to rig the rope, how to orient the hardware, where to pierce her in order to position her accordingly, and even the parabolic math necessary to “bend” rigid rope so that it looks like it is curving between points. Concepts found physical form.
The topographies I work through in my mind, make it possible to create these topographical arrays of rope and skin. It is very rare that I freestyle complex projects like these, as I believe the intention has to be set clearly from the get-go for this type of work. Even when I embrace chaos entirely when I am running the rope between multiple points with no clear plan or purpose, I still have to take into account that negative space needs to exist for the body to suspend safely between all the tensioned rope.
I do this with anything I create with suspension. I do it with my writing. I do this with my relationships. These are things that require clarity and well-defined intentions, if they are to work out, and elevate others. It’s fun to flounder, but it is powerful and resonant to give life to something new with clear intention.
Do you have personal mental landscapes you are familiar with?
Do you enjoy the liminal states, or are you more interested in getting to the other side?
What does the topography of your mind look like to you?
I’ll be diving into some more projects soon. Any particular ones you would like to learn more about? Let me know in the comments!
I hope the wheel turns in your favor this season, as we pass into deep Autumn.
This reminds me of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis. Not in the conventional sense of language being reflexive, but more the notion that Language itself is a folding; An abscurity within itself... for what language reveals, it also hides something else. Thus we shall never know the true name of God and whatever we intend to communicate will never be exactly what we want to say. Fuck. God is laughing at us but Im also sure They stay in heaven because They are afraid of what They created (Good one Steve).
Often times Ive chosen to stay in those liminal states because they seem inherently more real then the thing that comes out the other side. So complete you cant even comprehend it. But I guess that would break one of the fundamental laws of our strange world; In order to be, you must be seen, and you can't see yourself with your own eyeballs so you need other people for that. So here we are doing the impossible with the improbable. Casting nets of words and expressions through the void. We are the cleverness within the dice.
It sure can, but as i like to refer to it: "The folly of man" is also to know they must share something with the world and be seen as well. If we were to rest in the liminal state forever, there would be no point in existing. One time I made a drawimg of an awesome shelf that I was to build for a school project. Only problem was the way i had drawn it was impossible to make with the same proportiona in "real life". Too bad, it was a pretty awesome shelf before i ruined it by making it real. Lol.