UNITY

The fight with the ego is symbolized as an inner struggle for control. We live as disconnected machines in constant fight with ourselves and our surrounding, with a distorted perception. The figure remains anonymous to emphasize that this every day fight with our egos is within us all.

Calm returns once we let go of the struggle, let go of our egos and see ourselves as an integral part of all around us. Once we open our hearts and live with compassion and empathy, true humanity lives inside us.
This also links with the concept of UBUNTU – humanity toward others, humanity in the sense of humaneness, decency and human dignity. “I am because we are” rather than “I think therefore I am”.

At the TEDX Cape Town this video installation was performed live adding the live performance of INGE BECKMANN and MARK SPLENDID together with live strings.

BODY OF EVIDENCE – VIDEO ART INSTALLATION  consisting of UNITY and POWER OF RULING

Music by MR SAKITUMI

POWER OF RULING

Video Installation • Noël Labridy • 1:50 min. • 2015

POWER OF RULING confronts the fundamental streaks of power and/or rule.
A visual examination of the aggressors that make use of the oppression of the human, as well as that with all their power! fight those who protest against them.
At the same time, questions the replaceability of systems of power and rule which are based on oppression.
And respectively opposes them, in their entitlement to eternal Status Quo, with their own perishability.

The stillness of the two intertwined people forms a peaceful counterpoint to the harshness of the projected visuals.”

UNITY
Video Installation • Inka Kendzia • 1:58 min. • 2015

Through letting go of the ego control we allow ourselves to be a part of the whole, to be whole. No longer separating and classifying our emotions, responses and parts of being.

“… for several thousand years we have been obsessed with a false humility – on the one hand putting ourselves down as mere “creatures” who came into this world by the whim of God or the fluke of blind forces, and on the other, conceiving ourselves as separate personal egos fighting to control the physical world.
We have lacked the real humility of recognizing that we are members of the biosphere, the “harmony of contained conflicts” in which we cannot exist at all without the corporation of plants, insects, fish, cattle and bacteria. In the same measure we have lacked the proper self-respect of recognizing that I, the individual organism, am a structure of such fabulous ingenuity that it calls the whole universe into being. In the act of putting everything at a distance so as to describe and control it, we have orphaned ourselves both from the surrounding world and from our own bodies – leaving “I” as a discontented and alienated spook, anxious, guilty, unrelated and alone. “1

It is every individual’s responsibility to compassionately heal the self from this fragmentation within, when the ego takes charge, so that our outer world reflects this inner peaceful state of being.

1
Quote from “On The Taboo against knowing who you are” by Alan Watts.