entheogen
featured projects
©2024 entheogen designemergence
PLA, stainless steel bolts, frosted acrylic, interior lighting
approx. 42” x 42” x 42”
emergence
semantically, what does it mean to be ‘about’ something?
is this the relational nature of discourse,
an inherent property of inquiry,
where ‘about’ refers to the subject of knowledge, as in,
the text, the artwork, is ‘about x?’
or does ‘about’ imply a spatial relationship,
an orientation towards an object,
where ‘about’ functions prepositionally, meaning ‘to surround, to encapsulate?’
is there a difference between these positions?
lives are stories:
what kind of authors are we?
what characters do we create?
what worlds do they inhabit?
what plots are they tangled within?
yet this exegesis we all write is not about me,
or you,
or them,
it’s about Us –
that Greater Self that is the amalgamation of all our selves.
it is about eroding the boundaries that divide us –
and rather emphasizing the qualities that bind us –
it is about problematizing how our society categorizes and dehumanizes people.
it is about the ways in which we go about living our lives –
our compromises as much as our sacrifices.
it is about the liminal moment between perception and recognition -
where the object of perception’s initial outward appearance
does not match its true inner nature, deceiving -
it is about ever-present wonder and beauty -
it is about the hidden danger that lurks beneath this serene surface of beauty.
it is about those moments in life when language fails us –
those dizzying visions of grandeur that slip away the harder we grasp.
it is about how though we like to think of ourselves as ‘individuals,’
we are in reality particularized manifestations of broader social trends –
each of us always a singularity, a multiplicity, an inevitability, a trajectory.
it is about how time has this funny habit of always running out.
all lives are lines:
sometimes intersecting,
running parallel for a span –
cherish these fleeting convergences.
the convergence that makes humanity possible,
despite the universe’s inexorable crawl towards ultimate destination –
the demise of all demises, the entropic heat death of all that is,
the Earth affords us a pocket of negentropy -
an eddy in the chaotic stream,
a brief respite, a foothold.
technology,
humanity’s negotiation
of the universe’s ‘cold, uncaring, material circumstance’
is this very cold, uncaring material circumstance -
engaged in the process of gripping our embodied minds -
‘puncturing’ or popping,
this delicate bubble of negentropy
and restoring Earth’s flows
in the direction of entropy.
organic life, once slowing, stabilizing, self-perpetuating,
weaving self-entangling ecological webs,
now corrupted by entropic-technic principles of efficiency, extraction, acceleration,
profit, power,
uses humanity as a conduit
for restoring uncaring chaos to evolved balance.
is the universe watching us, holding its breath?
waiting to see if we will turn Heaven into Hell?
are each of us the universe experiencing itself for the first time?
coming to know itself in ways it never has before?
and despite its entropic inclination to not get entangled so much,