rev., Jun 3-4, 2021.
Disclaimer: As I only see art virtually now, this is a thought piece and not a review.
When, when you come to the demon, approach is cautious. I believe that Altmejd or gallery staff decided to include details in the slideshow, to create the effect of an approach, and surprise, with Unicorn, this shot lets us imagine that approach from behind it, a common horror movie ploy, is plausible
then one comes around and there is something decidedly off about the head, it has become detached
but then one swings around the front, and the shocker, a full skull opening, yawning wide
this is a common play in horror. Later on, in The Unborn (2007), when Casey dreams of the footage from a mysterious film of her mother’s asylum, she comes through the guardians at the gate
to then see her mother, sitting alone, of course, in a bay, of course, and by at least three, of course, curtained, of course, windows, lost to consciousness and the world.
apprehensively she circles around
and when she gets there, she springs the trap, the maw of the dead mother opens up wide
she spills a fetus out of her (her second born twin brother Jumby)
waking her up, to then see from her window, seemingly awake, but haunted awake
the psychopomp
indeed, it is the second, syngogic dream in a three-dream formation that usually involves nightmares of a more roaming sort, but mainly to visit the demons, and encounter them one way or another. This is nicely played out, for example, in The Nun (2018). In this movie, the formation is split, or externalized, to others, so it is Fr. Burke who dreams the first haunting. This ends him up stuck buried alive in a grave in the graveyard down the hill. It is left to Sister to hear him scream, and come looking. I remarked upon first analysis how strange it is, she walking in classic shots of gown prowl through the castle, but this is how this dream goes
then she comes upon a group of nuns apparently praying in the middle of the night, a real event,
but then it turns out it is a haunting, the demon-ghost does a walk around the perimeter of the room, the nuns gone
and then shows up as “real” in the mirror
and from in there, attacks her.
this then chases her out, down the hill, into the cemetery to find Fr Burke
but she only senses him because, set up by the prowl, and then the haunting, she has one of her episodes, a dizzy-vision attack, it distorts her face, the view
and she then digs him out, just barely
thus, this second level is the place one meets the demons, and by negotiating them you decide whether it is dream or life, but it is actually, simultaneously, both. For that reason, I place these three figures, Troll, Smoking with Onself, and The Unicorn, as encounters by way of the Green Eye of a second dreamer prowling the perimeters of one’s Umwelt, to then come upon TIND-TIRH, and live in a state uncertain if this is a dream, or really happening. It sets up the steps to the final level.
In this regard, though I think it slightly misplaced in the slideshow sequence, I consider Splitting Smurf to, in fact, be an image of the daimon overseeing frozen hell. As noted, in the third dream in an eldritch formation, one now thinks one is awake, and walking out of dream. But, in fact, you are still in a state of sleep paralysis, or dysmetropsia. Neither require drugs. I experienced both elements in episodes in my twenties, as I have mentioned umpteen times. The core, and optimal, experience here is ophthchthony, that is, seeing down through the darkness to the truth shot. But, of course, it never always goes according to plan, so there are splats, leaps, bounce outs and the like here too. All elements of this phase I locate in epigogy, previously called opistogogy, because it happens behind the eyes, either through Heaven’s or Tannhauser Gate. On the intraphase vigilogogic level, this is where, if you are in pain, or in and out of consciousness, of undergoing a proning for covid, this is likely where one sees CEVs, as I noted in my response to the covid-suffered drawings by Jennifer Coates, opening tonight.
If, however, the dysmetropsia of it (and the Nun had her dysmetropsic episode, to allow her to see the darkness), you are bounced out through the gates, behind the eyes, into the ambient-epiogigic space, where I have spent so much time of late exploring. This is the zone of monsters, or extravagant imaginings, or wide spins, and deep rrhexient spins and dives, a deeply vertical space. Blake placed Antaeus at the gate, lifting Dante down
I place Altmejd’s Splitting Smurf
the difference being that while Antaeus was up top lifting Dante down to the place of sacrifice, or of the exhomophage figure, at the top of the cenote, Splitting Smurf sits below in Zudecca and his whole being, if not here a giant (perhaps some day), encompasses the entire ambient terrain, as graphed out in a scirpograph
he has four eyes because he has moved through the Tannhauser Gate, to Heaven’s Gate, he sees truth and lies. He sees consciousness, and vigilogogy-hypnagogy, syngogy and epigogy, he sees the core of mind, the adjunct spaces, the ambient and the sentient, he sees all. His pineal gland third eye is slowly splitting open, at present it looks vulvalike, he has no nose, his hands are raised in hear no evil, speak no evil, etc pose, to indicate a transmutation of sense to another level, to the seeing of the unseen, or the monstrous
he gazes at his hands because, like Antaeus, these are what he uses to manage the passage of dreamers in this zone, he has doubts if he can do it
the back of his head still shows last lingering signs of having once been consumed by the green slime of the Trump years, but now the “ice” of blue has formed all about him, making him more steady.
Altmejd has his own details, his face, from behind, looks like a mask, the back of his neck is marked SPLIT, indicating he might be a store dummy, momentarily invested with power
Altmejd might also see him as a bureacrat transformed, his pencils, used for test-taking, or the filling out of forms, at the side, his body in fact more like a tabletop sculpture stance, not a human body.
but he signifies, to me, crossing over into the deep spin, and into the cenote, a totally different state of imagination, way, way out and down, as as been indicated by my treatment of the”hell on earth” trope in Mandy, and other movies, and my treatment of the monsters and hallucinations in the Amityville movies, particularly 2 and 3. But the key development that came to me, in fact, right as I saw this, is that hell on earth is frozen by frozen hell, which may or may not be a good thing. The phrase, we wont see that til hell freezes over means it will be a long time, my hope is now is the time of hell freezes over, perhaps
it follows, in my reading, that other quartzite works could be construed as figures carved out of the cenote, and, as such, effulgies, or effulgence sculptures, based on a freezing of the negative space of the cenote and all of its spins, I have mentioned the monsters coming up out of the cenote as pictured in that movie
and that and that this hellhole, the very picture of the vertiginous spin down the cenote, a peripteral phantom version of the central core of consciousness in hypnagogy
resulted in a splash of water, and then a freeze, freezing the negative space as an effulgy
then that blast up through the house
to freeze the radiators
cause freezing chandeliers to fall
and even send the sailfish flying
so all of the quarzite bespeaks the same position, subordinate to the oversight of Smurf.
this effect also bounces off of the Troll, but, again, I do not hold artists to my graphs
but, for me, and I think Splitting Smurf and The Unicorn ought to have been switched in position, Smurf is the presiding god of day
to then allow the final event, the Enlightment of the Witch, takes place in the place of sacrifice, atop the cenote, the deep fall into the deep brain, and she truly is taken apart and lifted up in a way to transcend every sheela na gig or google pic of childbirth, an effusive all-open being
The first thing you notice is that while her head and legs seem to have been generated by a kaleidopscic split, splitting her in half, but opening her up, her whole central belly as if rises up from inside her, as a second belly within belly, to then, all of it tattooed with safety sigils, give birth
The witch’s arms are behind, hold herself up, but then there are the arms of this other body on or in her, which is also being, like a placenta, birthed, opened up, and then shed like a snake skin. The head is literally a Rmmr graph of a force from below surging up through the cenote’ created by a splitting head, to open up to a new god, floating above even the place of the sacrifice, and a floating eye. This is then the witch of Frozen Hell Realized, doubts overcome
Her hands, her fingers, like in the Haunting of Hell House, Tanner’s fingers, surge with ectoplasmic visible energy
her tattooed, painted, four-breasted, and open-wombed body gives all but easy birth
with a hint of Grace Jones in her
and spread wide too
plus the polymastica goddess
and the baby crowning, amazingly, still
sent on his way, with a magic path, provided by tattoo
as if Nilotic apotropaic birth tattoos, to ensure a good birth (because they knew nothing else about it)
with Bes, of course, tattooed all over even the birthing stone
and Altmejd, of course, exploring these interiors in this way, in his own way, imagines the legs turned to wood but having to be lifted by fairies, almost out of Disney
is it “ok” for a male artist to give voice to the process of birth in a symbolic way? To the rationalists, whose intersections exist it appears only to put up barriers at, no; but a maternal universe is lived in by both men and woman, all humans are “born of woman,” it is only the spirit of it, the atmosphere, the general tenor of things which is so much less damn male egotism, that makes it advantageous. Men as well as woman worshipped the goddess, the goddess did not reign only in cult over amazons in separatist nations. Also, Freud’s argument that the birthing process for all gendered babies, the tension of resistance and curiosity, pushing and pulling one at one (which Corman used as a dramatic push-pull of his corridor crawls, changing the nature of the trope forever), allows for even the male to imagine what might the influence of that birthing be on his subsequent life. In my case, with an extraordinary birth, that is, I was a second born twin, and waited eight minutes in a womb that had already expelled one baby, I see the birthing experience as quite a bit more traumatic, fitting even for a subgenre birthing horror movie, of which there are many. For all this reason, and mostly because it is NOT rational, I am fine with Altmejd giving to the sacrifice place in epigogy the power of an enlightened witch (the opposite of the Blue Witch who has pursued me). I also take this Enlightenment of the Witch, at a time when the June Witches are invoked, the day of the Vorhees Vortex, and Midsummer (for which I read Ritual (1967) this year), coming up, this signifies a complete release to living in frozen hell, that is, all the horrors of hell on earth faced up to, but put at bay by the power of the imagination. All in all, then, Altmejd’s work, which I have responded to with cultic affection since I saw a werewolf swipe in the wall at Andrea Rosen so many years ago, bespeaks a moment in time, as the USofA comes out of covid, hopefully to help the world beat it too.
Enlightenment, in this case, equals the white album state. That state is not easy to reach. You have to experience second-stage syngogic dreaming, and prowl out one’s dream path in hypnagogic space; you have to then encounter TIND-TIRH, him to then flip it up to then pass on that knowledge to the final phase of ophthchony, seeing through the darkness to the truth. But if that eye bounces out and thus out to the epigogic if it carries the wisdom of the Umwelt up out into conscious life fighting dragons, and that algorithm, as it were, that pathway, directs one with confidence in the world, in dealing with the treacherous monstrosities, that is living in the white album. I discerned the three-dream Eldritch formation in summer, 2018, when I unlocked the mysteries of movie hypnagogy; during lockdown, I found the psychomachia of the Corposant placed in it, and worked that out. That made me think that dream paths peculiar to oneself, as in my reading of Bosch’s Garden, could be one’s soul. By incipient impulses but then finally with my study of the Amityville movies, I decided that syngogy was a separate state of mind, and then through either the Heaven’s or Tannhauser Gates lead to the epigogic realm of monsters, including the cenote dropping deep into the brain, where hell on earth lies. And, finally, coming out of lockdown, I argue that Zudecca, frozen hell, can be a state which, aware of hell on earth, keeps it at bay by living in full agency and power of the white album, one’s dreampath made conscious in life, to lead one to afterlife existence too. It strikes me as somewhat uncanny, then, Altmejd shows up for me precisely at the right moment, when I ponder how or if, against the odds of my impairments, there is life after covid lockdown.
rmarts 