Epiphany Video Installation

an immersive video installation

Artist Ali Hossaini (bio)
Composer Quentin Chiapetta
Year of production 2008
Media Projected video and stereo audio
Email alipantar at gmail
Other projects ArtLab, 4Monkeys, LAB, ArtFlux, Pantar Blog

description

Epiphany: The Cycle of Life is an immersive video installation. It consists of four channels of video projected on the walls of a square room. Each channel matches a voice in the polyphonic music commissioned for this project. Composer Quentin Chiappetta draws inspiration from traditions ranging from the music of Australian Aborigines to the motets of Palestrina. Visual themes curl around the music in a visual polyphony, creating a moving mandala that focuses the attention on universal themes of life and death.

The story unfolds through passages that represent the perceptions of a dying person. I was with my mother when she died, and she described how the world looked in her final moments. It struck me that there was a kind of mercy in her experience: as her body became inert, the world sprang to life. Chairs, walls and balloons started moving, and they spoke to her in a kind of welcome. Later when I read the Tibetan Book of Natural Liberation (aka the Book of the Dead), I was stuck by the accuracy of the lama's descriptions.

The story opens as the natural powers of perception are fading, as they blur into memories and experiences of the afterlife. Impressions of the world disappear as the soul begins a journey through alien worlds. At its conclusion the soul experiences the regenerative powers of life, expressed through the exuberance of plants.

Epiphany contains 10 chapters, each corresponding to a progressively more advanced state of death. Knowing the narrative enhances the play, but the installation is designed for fluid, non-linear experience. It can be enjoyed, in whole or in part, at any point.

Download an illustrated prospectus. Here is a general artist's statement.

locations

The installation was shot in several countries. Monuments like the Eiffel Tower, Times Square, the Christo Gates installation in Central Park, the Paris Catacombs, Chartres Cathedral, the steam fields of Iceland and the fjords of Greenland serve as metaphors for the cycles of life. The photography is dreamy and unconventional, using a grammar of blurs, waves and swirls to support the storyline.

exhibition

Epiphany is available as a 4-channel video installation for a square room with walls of 3 to 20 meters in length. The projected tracks are synched to a single stereo soundtrack.

prints

Prints are available for exhibition and sale.

demo video

maquettes

1: smoke

view larger size / / / view video
As death approaches, vision starts to blur while things take on an overwhelming presence. The sense of time alters. Memories crowd into the perceptual field, piling on top of one another, and the world itself becomes animate.

2: gates

view larger size
The living essence leaves the body. The Eiffel Tower and cathedrals start spinning as reality fades around the soul, to be replaced by a surreal landscape of vivid, distorted monuments. The world itself becomes a whirlpool, dragging the soul from its home and forcing it to pass through the gates of death.

maquette 3: fire

view larger size
The body dies the soul is consumed by fire. Often appearing as demons or terrifying visions, the material shell is burned away, freeing the soul which is now manifest as astral substance.

maquette 4: passage

view larger size
Now the soul is in a state of disbelief. Though it is a spiritual substance it clings to the idea of a body in its self-representation. It begins its astral journey by descending into the underworld, an endless staircase that spirals downward. Joined by other souls it begins the long trudge into Hades.

maquette 5: underworld

view larger size
The soul confronts the face of death, now its own face. In Hades bones are stacked impersonally. But even they are not real, they swirl like a whirlpool, dragging the soul into the realization, "Yes, I am dead. As dead as can be.'

maquette 6: neon

view larger size / / / view video
The soul is free of its bodily pretensions. It is disembodied, pure and ethereal. It enters a realm of quintessence, of pure light that burns away the body. Here is a realm of pure energy, and the soul perceives the energetic source of the cosmos, experienced a sexual play of intense colored lights.

maquette 7: cathedral

view larger size
The process of attachment begins as the soul descends back into the world. It moves through long rhythmic passages, conceiving of body, matter and limbs in a still-sanctified state.

maquette 8: water

view larger size
Large bodies of freezing water separate the astral and material realms. The soul adopts a pure vehicle to make the passage back into life. As it crosses back towards the physical world, it begins to see forms again, horses and other wild creatures made of pure crystallized energy.

maquette 9: volcano

view larger size / / / view video
Beyond the physical world lies a subliminal realm of ferocious energy. The soul leaves the ethereal realm for the powerful, rich colors of geothermal vents. Not yet organic, the steaming bowels of the living earth sustain life through a constant flow of heat, energy and passion.

maquette 10: rebirth

view larger size / / / view video
Plants are the foundation of life, and the soul reenters the biological world through a verdant bed of spiky plants each stretching towards the sun in a primordial act of yearning: the desire to return to the source of life.