Lucid Sleep

Curated by HH Art Spaces, Goa

The engagement of the Live Artist is aesthetic but also shamanic, one could say; to achieve a state of transcendence through transformation. To witness ones own metamorphosis, within a performance, is the work of the live-artist crafting Time, Space and Body.

The title recalls Abbe Ferria, whose statue stands outside the Adil Shah Palace, who is a key figure in the understanding of Goa’s identity – as a hub for the practitioners of the healing arts, shamans and yogis. Abbe Ferria (b. 1756, Candolim, Bardez, Goa), was the first to carry out a large work on the scientific study of hypnosis, “Of the Cause of Lucid Sleep or Study of the Nature of Man” (De La Cause du Sommeil Lucide Ou Étude de la Nature de l’Homme).

The artists presenting the performances in this series were invited for a period one-month to be artists-in-residence at the HH Art Spaces. We are an artist-run residency space founded in 2013, as a space focused on live-art practice. The performances are un-choreographed, unique pieces composed live, in-situ by each artist. The residues of the performances will remain on-display as installations after the closing of the festival.

Lisa Stertz: Through her work, Lisa Stertz (re)addresses notions of identity, culture, understanding, acceptance, respect, honesty, reason and gratitude. In other words, her work is exposed to the exploration of different modes of perception to point to an unbiased openness and to alter predetermination. This happens through looking at the physical body with its abilities, the emotional body with its language, and the performing body as a medium.

Jeetin Rangher: Jeetin Rangher’s performances are based on his observations of our social living. It is a response or critical reflection of our social as well as political behavior. He is concerned about the human interventions up on natural order and natural world. The supremacy that man tries to establish over nature, a kind of colonizing and displacing natural habitats is one of the concerns that he takes into the premises of his art, especially painting.

Virginia Zanetti: Virginia Zanetti’s artistic practice is a dialogue with the unfathomable content inside and outside us. She creates some “experiences” as a tool trying to capture the cosmic waves in the world, taking advantage of revealing coincidences, random circumstances manifesting some deep message. This makes the artwork an integral part of the environment where it is conceived: a collector of human dynamics.

For all printed lanyards at the festival, image credits: Lisa Stertz