Videos
2004
Noche oscura del alma
Installation 2004
Death exhibition, Area 405, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
→ www.area405.com
Noche oscura del alma (Dark night of the soul), digital video 3'50'', 2001
Soundtrack: Headphobiac by Ryo-co
Collection Museo Caraffa, Córdoba, Argentina
→ www.museocaraffa.org.ar
The title Noche oscura del alma (Dark night of the soul) is inspired by a poem of the mystic poet San Juan de la Cruz. His poem is a song of the soul that has reached the highest level of perfection, its union with God, through a negative spiritual way (negation of the senses, of the ego, ascetic life). The poem also describes the purification process San Juan has imposed on himself to reach this unity with God.
The video does not refer to the purification of the soul to reach this union, but to a condition of extreme vulnerability of a person, expressed by the inversion of the image. This state of vulnerability might be analog to a dark phase of the soul.
The image turned upside down acquires sense only after the reference to the non-inverted one. Death is approached negatively. It constitutes all what we cannot gaze, the unknown, the unimaginable, the ultimate uncertainty, although it is the only certain event of our life. It is from the inverted state, life, that we can think about it. Death, the spirit, God, all represent the darkness that the soul must pass through, probably to give sense to its existence. —
