Helena

„But suppose it comes and envelops your face while you are quietly asleep…” Jacques Lacan, Le séminaire. Livre XI: Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, Seuil, Paris, 1973. The project consists of photographs inspired by documentation of spiritualistic séances. I seek elements of this alternative reality in situations/things seemingly ordinary. It is a record of the “spirits” materialization itself, as well as the moment just before the appearance of ectoplasm. I treat ectoplasm as a representation of primordial, irrational force hidden in every structure - object or being. It is for me also a sudden coagulation of lamella – indivisible, indestructible, immortal substance, as Lacan describes it. “An uncanny excess of life” that does not need the ones who live. “An ‘undead’ urge that persists beyond the (biological) cycle of life and death”, as Žižek puts it. It is an organ without an organism. Life as a threat. This “surplus” is being captured, intentionally or accidentally, by photography. Camera becomes for me a tool extracting unnoticeable, till now, energy, that “excess”. It is like a record of too extensive, unbearable quantity of life, which spills out from reality. more highlights from the project: karina-sternum.tumblr.com