share

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Descriptions from the future/past


Peking, Pechili province, China: hired bannermen in a Manchu funeral procession. Photograph by John Thomson, 1869.



Shamanic instruction manual, Welcome Institute




Skeleton Man, Pseudo-Galen, Anathomia



Monday, September 28, 2009

Monday

"When humans are removed from their cultural environment basic truths about all humans will be revealed." (Lonner & Steel, 1994)

Monday, September 07, 2009

Near Death Experiences

"There was no discontinuity of consciousness. My first thought was "well, I guess this is what it's like to be dead". There was no fear or anxiety. I wondered what happened to my friend. Was he dead, too? I thought that I should look for him, but realized that I had no body. Actually, there was no physical reality whatsoever. Physical movement had no meaning. "

"The matter formerly perceived as light was now dark. All was darkness. Try as I would, I could neither see nor feel myself nor anything else. I took care not to lose track of which way was "back", as I was still interested in going there. Try as I would, I could perceive no response to my attempts to move. Carefully, I turned about to look back along the path I had come. There was nothing to be seen. Nor heard, felt, nor smelled. I was alone. I wondered why I wasn't afraid."

"Suddenly I again felt the same sensation as at the beginning, I was shot at great speed and found myself floating in a sort of dark abyss, where I could hear heartbreaking lamentations and suffering. I could feel thousands of souls who were suffering and lamenting, trying to cling to me, but not with the intention of taking me with them, rather they were trying to get out of the abyss."

"My sight misted over and I left my body like a gunshot into the darkness. I was very scared and fully conscious that I was dying. I thought that in a few moments everything would be finished, as the state of lucidity I had for the moment must be from the adrenalin which my body had surely secreted due to panic. Suddenly I found myself floating, I could hear and feel a sort of vibration, a buzzing, very pleasant and relaxing. I realized that around me were floating some strange and colored globes, very bright and strange, spinning on themselves slowly and all moving in the same direction as though pulled by some force. I looked in that direction and there was a warm, brilliant, white light."

"I started to feel warm and a distant light appeared in my minds eye. This light got slowly bigger and stronger and I began to feel really warm, almost hot. As the light advanced, I let it engulf me with its radiance and felt the feeling of upliftment. I felt no fear, pain or cold. It was very nice, safe and beautiful. At the split second that I was about to enter the white light, something inside me opened my eyes and shouted "NO! not yet! You have things to do"

I remember staring down at myself and the doctors that loomed over me. Like I was someone else floating above. And nothing went through my mind, there was no feeling then, I just stared down at myself and everything had gone silent.

"Then everything went hazy and black and my eyes opened and I was back on the cold table screaming."

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Other Criteria


I have just completed a project with publishers Other Criteria in London. I have produced a collection of monoprints 'Ghost' (pictured above) and a edition of etchings 'Ghost Proof'.

'Working from images of dead bodies gleaned on the internet and from books, Saville is preoccupied with restoring such temporal moments of death back into objects. Her work deals with the archetypes, symbolism and rituals around how we experience images of death and how these images have a totemic quality. Her Ghost prints have been disrupted by being drawn on, burned or cut, in many ways changing the mark making process and adding an element of risk to the coherence of the final image. The title for the monoprints, 'Ghost', is a suggestion of the transient, fluid nature of this process and a play on its obvious, more macabre, reference.'

Please look at https://www.othercriteria.com/browse/saville/all/ghost/ for more details