Luminality

Luminality (neologism) = Luminous + Liminality Liminality is an anthropological concept that refers to the stage in a ritual when participants temporarily abandon their normal societal roles and become immersed in the deep flow of a ritual. They are neither here nor there, they are betwixt and between their pre and post ritual selves. Carnival creates a ritual space of shared liminality, when the hierarchical structures of everyday life are temporarily suspended, allowing the participants to lose their sense of individuality, and fuse together in a collective ecstatic state called "communitas". The Carnival world is ever-changing, playful and undefined. It is a brief moment in which life escapes its official constraints and enacts utopian freedom. Hierarchies are overturned through inversions, debasements and profanations. Normally silenced voices hold forth, and latent energies erupt in a creative frenzy. Annually in Brazil, an entire year of preparation culminates in the euphoric expression of communal soul as the samba schools dance and sing their way through the Sambodromo stadium, propelled by the ferocious rhythm of their "baterias", bedazzled and bedazzling. These images are part of a multi-year project to visually interpret the ritual of Brazilian carnival. Carnival is a ritual of inversion, the high become low, the low become high, social norms are temporarily suspended. The raw images are layered and manipulated in an intentionally playful manner that is itself carnivalesque, as images are stacked upon one another, colors inverted, and new composite images emerge. The resulting delicate “no man’s land” balance between figurative and abstract is itself visually “liminal”. In this way, the images are a kind of meta-carnival, at once new, yet still resonating with the carnival spirit, as strange and fleeting as an ayahuasca vision.