Stefan Wojnecki (Poland)

Towards nirvana (2008)

Programme: Stara Lokomotywownia, Czarnieckiego 8 Friday (20.03) Start 17:00

The end or the beginning?
The multimedia presentation Towards nirvana is a fusion of one of the four ancient elements in the form of volatile and imponderable smoke with computer animation – the reality of the XXIst century having the features of rigid precision and utter repeatability. Computer animation does not totally neutralise the shapelessness of the smoke.
A person is inside the three-dimensional image and yields to the unique, even mystical experience of the secret of being. The need for darkness invites intimacy, experiencing ones inside. Such terms as a time-gate, a tunnel to eternity, endlessness of depth, becoming – determine the magic, the metaphysics of the experience.
I am quoting words about the meaning of smoke according to The Lexicon Signs of the World by Piotr Kowalski.
A column of smoke reaching the sky, sets out the vertical order of the world and it becomes one of the links between the earth and the sky... Verticalism, heading for the god regions, that is the simplest justification of the sacrificial meaning of smoke... Sacrifice changed into smoke becomes a form of a gift and of gods' food... The gods’ liking for smoke derives also from the fact that its shapelessness and the confusion it causes reflect the dissimilarity of That world... Stupefaction also plays an important part in many prophetic procedures... Priests staring into the smoke rising from the sacrifice determined
the chances of undertaken actions… A mediator , a sign of a possible connection between the earth and the land of ghosts but also a factor which allows crossing the border between them, it has numerous magical, healing and protective uses... Smoke also played an anti-demonic role; it cleared the grounds and it repelled the evil.