Skeptics vs. Mystics

American (sic) artist Michael Atavar explores temporality and spirituality in his art, operating within and beyond gallery walls through literature, performance and Internet. ML: Michael, your latest performance and installation work, and the intended work for Skeptics vs. mystics, focuses on time travel. How would you describe this aspect of your work? How does your exploration of time travel tie in with your 'cyber art' projects? MA: I am an artist who works with the unconscious, using methodologies of chance and process to make events both in real time and in the online environment. My practice is with energy; I'm a process worker. My work is post-industrial, connecting audiences with unconscious spaces that go beyond the material. In this immaterial, liminal space I experiment on myself, allowing my unconscious to take itself where it wants to go. This journey is across boundaries and one of the barriers that could be stepped through is time. In essence my work is a kind of 'tuning in': building an interior Ethernet, created by me for use by the audience. ML: How do your immaterial experimentations materialise in the gallery space? Could you describe some of the physical manifestations analogous to the type of work you are intending to produce for Skeptics vs. Mystics? MA: It might be useful to describe one of my recent performances. dusk (2006) takes place at the hour of dusk. Start times are variable, depending on the season. The performance is for a maximum of forty people. The piece is usually exhibited in a gallery space and this environment must have a large window. The spectators watch dusk as it happens, in front of their eyes, whilst I enact as series of liminal experiments, using my own unconscious. During this show I tune into the space, I build a threshold (using the most basic of domestic materials), I throw the I Ching and I deposit an image inside the audience members. With all these activities I'm essentially using my own creative imagination to delineate unexplored spatial dimensions simultaneously present in the room. At dusk I believe that these liminal spaces can be more easily seen. I've made no photographic documentation of dusk. This is quite a deliberate policy. I'm inviting people to take part in a live event that they are unable to preview in any other medium. It only exists with me in the room. I'm not sure which piece I will bring to Skeptics vs. Mystics. My latest show Black Magic (2009) uses similar techniques to the ones I use in dusk. In this performance I build a time machine live on stage. ML: Are you able to elaborate on Black Magic? What materials are employed in building the time machine, and how does the performance transpire? MA: I'm very circumspect about talking about the specifics of the shows. After all if you understand the trick why would you attend the magic show? Sadly, this show Skeptics vs. Mystics never happened. Although it’s outside the time limits of this website, it presents a tantalising indication of a future life after dusk Melissa Loughnan Skeptics vs. mystics', Runway Magazine Issue 14, Futures, Winter In conversation with Sean Peoples, Nathan Gray and Michael Atavar concerning Skeptics vs. Mystics, a forthcoming curatorial project of Nathan Gray and Pedro Caetano 2009