Project by Divya Singh
Terminarch “noun. The last known individual of a lineage, species, or subspecies… Once the terminarch dies, the species or lineage becomes extinct. Alternative names put forth for the last individual of its kind include ender or endling.”
Within this project I've produced a set of videos that are geared towards exploring elements within our collective existential challenges and uncertain futures that look through a lens which is poetic, philosophical and spiritual in nature. The text as well as the visuals are produced from an artistic/imaginative lens ruminating over and looking at various dimensions of the experience and impact of human existence, not just upon our own psyches but that of the collectivity of the planet itself. Dissecting the fragile aspect of what constitutes the human real versus the virtual, and exploring spiritual technologies as a form of posthuman spiritual inquiry (as well as an epistemic re-ordering of what constitutes the real in cultures outside the matrix of coloniality.)
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The project is divided into three parts:
Part One: Coming to Life The project begins from a space of wonder, looking at one’s own shape and shadow – trying to come to terms with one’s own material form, while also coming to terms with one’s ‘Thrownness’ (Geworfen / Geworfenheit , see Heidegger). The idea of cyclical time and rebirth are of significance within the narrative and are foundational elements of the perspective which informs the narrative (Can also be understood in parallel to the idea of respawning in video games) The narrative is built in progression looking at various ideas, some of which come from a certain postcolonial ambivalence pertaining to what constitutes reality, looking at the idea of transgenerational transfers – various inheritances – material as well as spiritual information – ancestors, blessings – communication technology (Prayer) – mapping – birth charts – paradigms of life and death.
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Part Two: Seeking Freedom/ The true Virtual / Cosmic traveler
The second part of the project looks at how the body which has come to life now interacts with the world around itself, and how reality and the relationship to reality is affected by the very body one inhabits, in a political sense (Geo-body politics, see Mignolo). Outside it's own material form, observing how the politics of certain epistemologies and hierarchies set up by coloniality, elementally produce themselves as solid/concrete, and therefore obstructive compared to the body in space inherently fluid, seeking movement and freedom. Seeking/yearning for this very posthuman freedom, one engages with knowledge systems which exist parallel to the dominant canon. Challenging themselves and the canon, through ancestral knowledge, reengaging with occulted faith and belief systems, gaining confidence/strength via this parallel episteme, whose source is cosmological and spiritual in nature, through which the body in space/in question finally seeks to fulfill it's desire for freedom. Seeing the spiritual as a basic constituent of realities - perceiving nature s technology and the realm of the psychic as the 'true' virtual, as well as seeing the psychic as an existing network of communication and power. Consciously acknowledging and harnessing human psychic access to non-ocular dimensions (Matrixial Gaze, see Ettinger, Bracha) as a form of transcendental spiritual technology.
Part Three: Humming / Dreaming Bodies in Space
Within the same narrative, on a quest for posthuman freedom, the progression moves beyond the material self and the world around it, transcending the confines of the planet itself. The narrative follows the idea that the planet itself, being alive, is dreaming, and is in a deep meditative state fulfilling its gravitational function within an interconnected cosmos - it's requirement to exist in such a state at that macro level is a requirement of sound and frequency which holds micro realities on the planet together. Far removed from micro life, perceiving everything at a molecular level and breaking everything down into wave and particle, sound and frequency - returning to a formless, vast, truth.
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