SWAMI スワミ. ADAPTASI CYCLE 2022
Film 4K. 6 Min. AV Installation | Performance. By Mit Borrás, Art Director Rachel Lamot, Music Daniel Vacas Peralta. Written by Mit Borrás & Rachel Lamot,
With Manuel Escorihuela, Fashion Design Path by Janine Grosche, Song Soviet Gym, Drone Liu Zhang, Make Up FX Harpo, Ana Cuéllar,
Eloy Noguera Atienza, Maria José Peregrina, Sound Effects Rachel Lamot, Hawk Emociones al Vuelo,
Production Design Cavve. Images courtesy of the artist, 2022
Set in an alternative future, Swami is the story of a shaman who celebrates a rite dedicated to the veneration of technology, the leading element in the worship of a new cult mediated by nature through the use of flowers, water, the dance of the drones and the chants as a way of crossing the path to transcendence. With a transhumanist perspective, Swami deals with the cult of the spirituality of technological progress and the full adaptation that culminates in a euphoric dance for death and the afterlife. The ceremony is inspired by elements of the Hindu ceremony in the name of Kali, the goddess of death, time and doomsday, whose name means darkness, which Mit Borrás attended at the Kali Kovil temple in Trincomalee in Sri Lanka in 2019. The rite of Swami also draws influences from contemporary yoga routines, Berlin techno rave parties and formal ceremonial resources from the East in order to ultimately recreate a form of new ritual, inscribed in an alternative time but reflective of ours. In this future, the human being lives in balance, all the characters of Adaptasi Cycle live in a limbo surrounded by nature and isolated except for the AI company and robotic animals. Their fluid nature in a broad sense is that of beings in a border state between androids, dead and alive at the same time, in the realm of the spectral and ghostly.
Swami is an honorific title given to person ascetic who has chosen the path of renunciation, sannyāsa, and can roughly be translated as he/she who knows and is master of himself/herself. The term is often attributed to someone who has achieved mastery of a particular yogic system or demonstrated profound devotion. The dance that appears in the final sequence is a new form of Tandava, the frantic dance of Shiva that in Hinduism means the destruction and construction of the universe. Here, preserving its symbology, it is formally closer to the interpretation of a techno dance in a sublimated contemporary rave.The work has been carried out under the direction of Mit Borrás, the art direction of Rachel Lamot, the script by Borrás and Lamot and the excellent work of the music by the composer Daniel Vacas Peralta and the fashion designs of Path by Janine Grosche, in addition to the participation of Manuel Escorihuela in the performance, Liu Zhang with the drones and the technical team.
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