The Cosmic Dancer

Brochure & animation for #FUTUREMYTH at 319 Scholes, NY. S-Tag: Lost in Connotation, Forever

Printfile, page 4 & 1

Printfile, page 2 & 3

~°~The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in a single spot, but gaily, lightly, turns and leaps from one position to another. It is possible to speak from only one point at a time, but that does not invalidate the insights of the rest ~°~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1968

The Cosmic Dancer tries to explore the possibilities of escaping from and with myths to new directions of cultural production. The Cosmic Dancer cuts with history through destroying everything… and (re)building new pathways. The 4 pages brochure with a single text-insert shows different approaches in form of wild combinations of thoughts, pictures and quotes: Starting from the idea that philosophers envy dancers of their skills to turn and move very quickly and fast to different points, this printed research form offers insights from indian mythology to symbols of transcendence to enabling power of users to altermodern ideas of Nicholas Bourriaud.

~°~ Creation through Dancing
~°~ Do you believe in users?
~°~ Holding On/ Let it go
~°~ For the sake of moving.

Making the brochures ready to ship overseas

Exhibition Background:

~°~ The interior of man has been essentially the same for 40,000 years, since the first emergence of Homo Sapiens. Myth has to do with the spiritual potentialities of this constant, this human being. But the images of myth must be derived from the environment of today and in this place. There is therefore a constant transformation of the image, but not of the reference ~°~ Joseph Campbell, Interview with Costis Ballas, 1985

~°~ Artists explain and preserve the human experience through myth, translating internal visions into external interpretations, in order to make sense of physical and psychological worlds. Through a collective agency supported by pervasive connectivity, the creation, purpose, and evolution of myth transfers back into the hands of the global village, reclaimed from centuries of appropriation. Eventually, a sentience emerged, and myths took on a new form—rather than being explicative, they have become alternative. Advances in technology have rendered natural phenomena mere novelty, seemingly explaining all but the existential meaning and complexity of the human mind. Jung suggests that the collective unconscious is a conditioned state, that archetypes are finite and the same mythologies will reiterate ceaselessly. However, storytellers are no longer interested in interpretation, and instead aim to materialize and explore meta-realities. The communal space of the Internet has developed into a proverbial campfire where we sit, glassy-eyed, transfixed by the glow, waiting for revelations.
What’s the state of the modern myth? How do myths proliferate, what do we use to represent them, and what’s the cultural value of storytelling? #FUTUREMYTH presents digital artists engaged in contemporary myth-making who are using the gallery as a way to navigate, define, and discuss the current landscape of mythology and its relevance in our technologically dependent lives. ~°~

Christina Latina & Daniel Leyva (currators of #FURUEMYTH)
Information about the art show can be seen here: Website of 319 Scholes

Google glasses vs. the hermeneutic circle. a course of dancing

~°~The artist becomes “homo viator”, the prototype of the contemporary traveller whose passage through signs and formats refers to a contemporary experience of mobility, travel and transpassing. This evolution can be seen in the way works are made: a new type of form is appearing, the journey-form, made of lines drawn both in space and time, materialising trajectories rather than destinations. The form of the work expresses a course, a wandering, rather than a fixed space-time ~°~ Nicholas Bourriaud, Altermodern, 2009

Used Tags


“Nataraja is a depiction of the god Shiva as the cosmic dancer who performs his divine dance to destroy a weary universe and make preparations for the god Brahma to start the process of creation.""
-- Wikipedia

The main narrative: Nietzsche's obsession with dancing

The Cosmic Dancer's main narrative goes back and forth Nietzsche's ideas of thinking & dancing by exploring the tattoo cult of starlet Megan Fox. She might be the perfect example of the modern "Semionaut": Having the inscript of Nietzsche's dancing tattoo on the one hand (righten belly side), she removed on her righten arm a Madonna tattoo – showing the possibilities of discontinuity with history: #dancing through life.

Megan Fox's Nietzsche-Tattoo

contemporary tattoo removal practice

disappearance of Fox's Madonna

The Cosmic Dancer is the perfect chain link between my "Slippery Design" ideas and the "Duck House Theory". While the bird stands for transcendence (in terms of intellectual engagement) there are also some of them who really like to (just) shake their bootys. "Last Chance, Rain Dance" - the slippery design of the Cosmic Dancer brochure leads to moments of "Lost in Connotation". Holding On - Let It Go!

Cosmic Duck