To Move Through the Dark Night of the Soul

This is an offering by which we share our transmutational encounters with the Chilean firebush

and its Australian relative, the tree waratah. Our journey in distilling the flower essence

of these Gondwana sister plants has been full of questions to and from our vegetal doubles:

Is it possible to collectively remember how to shapeshift and live a mystic life more fully?

Is the soul to be found in the centre of the earth or in the scent of a flower?

How do we all die well together, or are we already dead?

If we are, how does the red colour of a flower explain the blood in our veins?

Random and dynamic, bridging gaps between physical and spiritual worlds,

we have come to an understanding through a series of imaginings and intuitions

that tell of fortunes, transformation and a cautioning of death.

We wrote these words to move through the dark night of the soul with you.

 

 

 

Title image:

Caitlin Franzmann
Maku Kipa, 2019
Pencil and gouache on paper
93 Å~ 60 cm
Courtesy of the artist

This is a preview of "To Move Through the Dark Night of the Soul". The full article can be found in Art + Australia Issue Eight.
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Caitlin Franzmann

Caitlin Franzmann is a Brisbane-based artist who creates installations, performances and social practice works that focus on place-based knowledge and clairsentience. Her work has been featured in exhibitions globally, including at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Kyoto Art Centre; and New Museum, New York. Franzmann was a member of the feminist art collective LEVEL from 2013 to 2017, co-curating exhibitions and forums with a focus on generating dialogue around gender, feminism and contemporary art. She is currently a member of Ensayos, a collective research practice centered on extinction, human geography and coastal health.

Camila Marambio

Camila Marambio is a curator, private investigator, permaculture enthusiast, amateur dancer and writer. In 2010, she founded and now directs the nomadic research program Ensayos. Ensayos brings together artists, scientists and locals to exercise speculative and emergent forms of eco-cultural ethics at the world’s end. Marambio has a PhD in Curatorial Practice from Monash University (2019), a Master of Experiments in Arts and Politics from Sciences Po, Paris (2012) and an MA in Modern Art: Critical Studies from Columbia University, New York (2004). She is co-author of the books Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja, with Cecilia Vicu.a (Errant Bodies Press, 2019) and Sandcastles: Cancerous Bodies and Their Necro/Powers, with Nina Lykke (forthcoming).