c h r y s t e n e w o r k s: Roadside Attraction: An Alchemical Journey of Despair and Light

ALL CONTENT AND IMAGES © CHRYSTENE ELLS, 2017

working title

This thing is spitting images out of the depths into consciousness and all I can do for now is try my best to transcribe it in sketches, paintings, and a few disjointed narrative moments like a dozen post-its hanging on a mile-long string.

UPDATE: I just discovered the phrase horror vacui, which describes a fear artists have about leaving a space on a piece of work empty. In cartography this fear is addressed by filling up any empty spaces with monsters, decorative imagery, and so on; it's also a way of covering up for lack of knowledge about uncharted areas on the map. Very interesting. Perhaps the title or subtitle of the work...?

Anyway.... here's what it looks like so far....

What is it?

It is a performative, interactive, modular gallery installation that includes elements of Rube Goldberg machines and hand-cranked automata, activated by the viewer using cranks and levers, installed in a number of steamer trunks. Each steamer trunk contains a chapter in the story. Viewers can move through the story sequentially, or in any order they choose; the archetypal Journey rarely manifests chronologically in real Life...

Why?

Archetypes and Alchemy pull at something inside of us. We know there is power in these things, and a deep, rich, Source of truth. They are magnificent mysteries: unanswerable, unknowable, the itch you can't scratch, the planet you can't quite get to. But you can dream about it. And you can ride a parallel course in your waking life, and connect to the deeper Oneness and Universality through your own journey as a human. This is what I want to explore. I want to scratch the itch, I want to get as close as I can to the heart of the thing.

The Intersection of Heaven and Earth - concept sketch, 2017

The dichotomy of Good and Evil are not part of this story; rather the narrative emphasizes individuation and wholeness of the main character, its connection to the cosmos, and the essential nature of every element in the entire narrative, both those that could be deemed 'negative' and the 'positive' events as well.

Note: I hesitate to use the term 'Hero's Journey' because it has been absolutely defiled by popular culture, but it is an ancient model that I do believe still speaks to us at a cellular/collective unconscious level. I don't want to intentionally plot the story on the Hero's Journey for a thousand reasons, but it will probably end up looking like one anyway. So the term may pop up during process as shorthand, but with these caveats.

Ouroboros Around the Sun - 9"x12", gouache and ink on paper, 2017

Synopsis

The project follows the Grand Narrative of a strange and transcendent journey undertaken by an insignificant Character through a mechanized landscape of archetypes, the four elements, archaic navigational and timekeeping devices, light and dark, and obsolete and/or fabricated languages and alphabets, arriving at the penultimate chapter of complete transformation ...

Medieval, prehistoric, and probably carnivalesque.

The Viewer and The Traveler

River Journey, 5"x7", gouache on paper, 2017

Responsible for activating the story, the Viewer becomes, in essence, the force of Fate or Destiny. What do I think about that? I'm not sure. The piece challenges the concept of Free Will for the Traveler, who is at the mercy of the Viewer, while also placing the Viewer in the position of the Witness. In essence, I believe there is a relationship between the Viewer and the Traveler that parallels our own internal relationship to our own Witness-Bigger Self and our Persona-Ego Self.

The Traveler is basically a flour sack (like Disney's flour sack), a beanbag type character with knots in the four corners. I first designed this character years ago when I was working for NASA. It is loosely based on the Mars Bunny.

I'm not sure if it has a face.

Of course The Traveler undergoes a transformation into something else at the end which currently eludes. Something to do with Light.

Cosmic Egg - 5"x7", gouache on paper, 2017

Mechanisms

AMBIGUIS ALIS LABILIS HORA VOLAT
(with shifting wings the transient hours fly by)
12"x 9" - gouache on paper, 2017

The wooden mechanisms will be visible in a kind of Below World. For examples of the kinds of mechanisms I am envisioning please click on the images here: automata gifs, or watch this Youtube vid of an automata installation by Cabaret Mechanical Theatre. Also see Cecilia Shiller's work, in particular the Dragon and Walk in the Park. The aesthetics of the World I want to create are richer and more intricate than these, but the mechanisms themselves will be rough and rudimentary.

The landscapes in the Above World are rich and strange. Everything is alive: buildings, boats, bridges, toll booths, and so forth have faces; the hills have eyes. There are roadside billboards and Burma Shave style signposts with portentous poems announcing attractions ahead. Some might be in English or Old English; others in Latin or obsolete languages, or even fabricated runic, hieroglyphic or extra-terrestrial languages. Some may resemble carnival banners, others illuminated manuscripts.

What do the Mechanisms mean? The idea of the machina mundi, the Clockwork or Mechanized Universe, is fascinating. Even though the application of this model is obsolete in contemporary physics, I have a sense there is a deeper truth in this concept which perhaps, like the study of Alchemy, may be applied to the internal universe, the Spiritual or Life Journey. Again, there is that question of Determinism.

Aside: My late heart-papa Ron, one of my great teachers, compared our lives to an amusement park boat cave ride. We are provided with a steering wheel that seems to function: the passage veers to the left or right and we obediently steer to the left or right. However, if we should try to steer away from the intended course, the boat, nonetheless, will stay on its underwater track. Because the forces of the swirling cosmos are so much greater than our own will, and affect us so much more than our own determinations, this parable has always spoken to me. The natural anger and resistance that arises when the boat doesn't go where we want it to are a great source of suffering. So, what is that sweet spot between fuming and throwing in the towel altogether? If we have so little actual agency -- while actually believing that we are in control -- what are we here to do?

Miscellany

Aliens will make an appearance; there will be a Vimana - Chariot of the Gods - that transports the Traveler through time.

There will be helpers and guides along the way, such as a Ferryman to transport the Traveler across an actual body of water on a boat that is on a track. The Traveler will also meet a Dragon (of course), and various and sundry other characters. The Dark Night of the Soul chapter will be a solo journey through a dark valley.

One Chapter could resemble a Mystery Play, with a Hell Mouth and stages on wooden wagons, the Traveler of course going through the Hell Mouth and into the Dark Night.

There will be a large Sundial with a golden Sun light and a blue Moon light that swing around it, creating day and night. Could it be something that allows Night to align with the Dark Night of the Soul, after the Hellmouth? Hmmm, not if Viewers are able to run chapters randomly.

possible bird pointer for sundial

Navigational devices might be informed by existing apparatus: sextants, maps, charts, astrolabes, armillary spheres, the Antikythera Mechanism, and the Nebra Sky Disk.

Dream Map - 9"x12" - gouache and ink on paper, 2015

Tarot imagery is overused but potent; the project may include distant but recognizable archetypes and possibly characters that could be relatives twice removed from denizens of the Tarot Major Arcana, such as The Hanged Man, The Falling Tower, and The World. Also, just characters that come up: Sacred Tree, Flying Dog, Wrapped Queen.

Wrapped Queen - 9"x12" - gouache and ink on paper, 2015

Other fairy-tale, mythological, and arcane imagery might also be included: buried treasure, chess pieces, apples, ravens, roses, a wolf...

random images of things - Vimana, The Apple, Chess pieces, Skulls,
a Raven's head as part of a sculptural face on a building, Skull Stake road markers, etc.

Buried Chest - 7"x7" - gouache and ink on paper, 2013

Other cultural references would include imagery from eastern and First Nations cultures, as well as some contemporary imagery. The story is universal. Culture is secondary.

Shaman wolf who opens up to reveal his dancing skeleton and some mystery or clue

Questions and Challenges

The symbolic narrative must be streamlined. What do the alchemical elements mean in terms of the story? What are the metaphoric weights of salt, water, fire, rock, the sun? What does the wolf mean? What does the compass? Do these things correspond to their traditional mythological functions or not?

The narrative itself needs to be plotted. What is the story?

So much to figure out.

scribblings

Themes

Non-duality
Transcendence (see Jung’s Transcendent Function)
Transformation (as in Alchemy, or in Jung’s application of Alchemy as a metaphor for the individuation process)
Other

Rabbit Map One Love - 9"x12", gouache and ink on paper, 2016

Horror Vacui in art: There is a small note on a 1592 world map by the Dutch cartographer Petrus Plancius, in which he says, in effect, that he went out of his way to research the constellations of the southern sky for a small celestial map he drew in one corner, “Least the South part of this Hemispheare or halfe Globe, should remaine voide and emptie.”