SOOT Stereo Ritual (negative pattern)
Recently I have begun working with soot taken from a tire factory, where it is used as a pigment and component for tires. I visited the tire Factory Barum/Continental in Zlin/Otrokovice which was created as a subsidiary of Bata shoes in the 1930’s. In 1992 the factory bought the German tire company Continental and is now one of the biggest producers of tires in the world. Soot represents a symbol of the industrial era and automobilism and is also one of the first man made pigments. During this time which can perhaps be thought of as a slow apocalypse, I have begun to think about healing objects and what they might look like. For this reason I developed the SOOT Stereo Ritual as a kind of one person stereo light strobo-therapy.
An analogy to this, in our physical landscape, might include all the toxins we have created from the industrial revolution to the present. Such toxins unquestionably affect our physical and psychological health.
My inspiration for the SOOT Stereo Ritual was to create a cyber-punk utopian object that would work as an aid in meditating on both the past and the future. By repurposing a toxic material into something that can create awareness, the piece also shows how we can break negative patterns that relate to humanity’s impact on its environment.
