Churning Formations

JS—Horseman

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Churning Formations

א Churning Formation(s); Breath Machine ב

Installed at Lancaster Museum of Art, Counterbalance Exhibition, curated by Jeremy Waak & Mathew Apol

JS-Horseman, Churning Formations; Breath Machine, Clay, Concrete, Resin, Beeswax, Straw, Sound on Vinyl Record, ©2025

אChurning Formation(s); Breath Machine ב, Bricks: Clay, Straw, Beeswax, Ash, Stone, Concrete, Resin, Looped Vinyl Record, Sound Composition/Recorded Sound Processes, Light, L 52″ w 30″ h 14″,01/2020-2025, and on going…

א Churning Formation(s); Breath Machine ב is a process-oriented installation perpetuated from the simple act of drawing a circle with constant repetitive motion. This site-specific installation is a result of creating bricks as figurative representations, a process that began in the wake of the Covid epidemic, followed by elevated outbreaks of global warfare and violence. As a substance and a sound, this work conceptualizes the formation of a human body as a material abstraction, focused on the sacredness of breath.
This work is a process, a meditation, a motion confronting a recurring inspiration in my life’s work, the formation of golem & golmi (the unformed/incomplete). Unlike the familiar portrayal of the golem as clay humanoid, an earthen android (formed and brought to life from ‘magical’ incantations directed by the mysterious texts of the HaSefer Yetzirah), א Churning Formation(s); Breath Machine ב references a much less familiar interpretation of the golem from the perspective of a few Medieval Sephardic Kabbalists. This interpretation and intent with creating a golem was simply an act of intellectual mindfulness of churning a spoonful of earth and water into mud. This contemplative ritual focused on the creation of a human being and/as the universe, culminating with an attempt to recite the entire mystical text Ha Sefer Yetzirah, in one final concentrated breath. This concept emerged with the Sephardic kabballists (Avraham Abulafia, R. Moshe Cordovero) who interpreted the golem ritual(s) as nonliteral, but as an intellectual and meditational motion.

The ‘Churning Spoon’, A looped Vinyl Record Process

“The ‘Bricks’ are bodies shaped by the gravity of surrounding circumstances and external forces. Some of the bricks are fashioned of pure unfired clay/soil, intimately hand-formed. Some are uniform, machined, and manufactured. Some are glowing with light. Some bricks are sturdy, some are frail. Some bricks are reduced to ash and reformed with beeswax. Some of the bricks are shattered from the heat of a fire, then awkwardly repaired. Some are ‘reborn’ as a synthetic substance. With careful repetition, the earthen ‘bodies’ are inscribed with binary code ‘commands’ and stacked into interlocking forms. The meticulous assemblage of work a is material evolution, a process of both individual and collective metamorphosis. During the building process, the individual brick ‘bodies’ shift from a microcosmic to macrocosmic state, they become an ecosystem of synergetic parts with strength in unity, and self repair. All the while, a persistent circular motion of a vinyl record, a ‘churning spoon’, unravels layered and mysterious voices an incantatory command for a sonic ‘breath machine’, breathing and exhaling life into a static formation.“

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