Una habitación pequeña
Escuela del fosfeno
Registro hablado
Fosfenos
Desentierro
By sound
Birdscapes
Les chutes du temps
Geomancia
Palíndromos
EMM
Arbórea
Bambusoideae
Paisaje microscópico
Cool coco
Drone
Conceived as a space for sensorial experimentation, the installation is activated by a light device that projects flickering light at a speed of 10 flashes per second, inducing the expression of Alpha waves in the brain and the perception of visual hallucinations called phosphenes. This procedure, which has been studied by modern science since the beginning of the 19th century, entered artistic practice in the 1960s with the Dreamachine device-work by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville
People are asked to draw their visions directly on the walls of the gallery, intervening it collectively and leaving a visual testimony for the next visitors. In addition, information is collected from some spectators to determine the most recurrent colors and geometric shapes. Drawing, sound experimentation and writing workshops (by Almendra Benavente) are held with collaborators, in which individual experiences are externalized through artistic techniques.
The name of the exhibition suggests the idea of a school, being the phosphenes the ones in charge of teaching an inner dimension that is visual, sensorial and that yields personal symbolic interpretations. The experience of this non-ordinary state of consciousness is proposed as a type of knowledge, susceptible of being apprehended and transmitted, making possible the (self-)education around a mental state that is not specifically governed by rational intelligence. It seeks to value certain forms of knowledge, such as the ecstatic trance known in the West as religious ecstasy, rediscovering human faculties that have been diminished and denied since modernity.