Lotophagy #2

Photo print, white border

12" x 9"
12" x 18"

"From late spring to autumn, I journey to the River Ros – to the places of denudation of ancient igneous rocks dating back to prehistoric times of geological and cosmic catastrophes that formed the Earth several billion years ago. In this area of the River Ros valley, the landscape is rocky and indented, dangerous and unpredictable, the flow is fast and the river branches forming an archipelago of small islands. Traveling on water, where a flux allows you to move with equipment, I discover new fluvial lagoons. I stay there for a long time while observing how life meanders in riverine depths.

I like the idea of the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani about life as a lagoon: life forms are lagoons temporarily protecting themselves from the Outside that created them and will eventually destroy them. The lagoon is the memory of life about its origin, organized as oblivion. I see the similarity of this metaphor with the plot from Greek mythology which is about the lotus-eaters living on an island. The lotus flowers were a narcotic, causing the inhabitants to sleep. Those who ate the plant forget their home and never cared to return.

Being with a camera in an environment that is both fluid and impermeable and seems to be open to cosmic scenarios and chances irrupting into the interiority of terrestrial life itself, I am encouraged by the experience that our memory is not what we remember, but it is the call to remembrance – the blind stain with no definite edges, light, and blackness at the same time – binding us with the past and the future of the Earth."