shaman

drawing / research

2015

site undefined

pre-degree project

 

 

Peter Eisenman once asked Hejduk,

“What happens when the people die?”

Hejduk responded,

“They go on living there.”

The present is defined only by motion: the passage from past to future. In this way, Hejduk reveals that the essence of dwelling in transience.

Hejduk, Mask, p86, p59

 

 

The question of an afterlife has been lingering at the edge of the present and the world of unknown. Conforming, or being intimidated by a possible existence of someone omnipotent in else world, people rely on a mediator who practices delivering messages between this world and the other. The eccentricity of shamanism, ironically, keeps the most intimacy with people, involving a practitioner, shaman, reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with a spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world. A shaman sits and keeps a balance between the live and the disease coordinating the longings of both.

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Photograph, Kim Kum-hwa, Living National Treasure of Republic of Korea