Mytho-mania

Mytho-mania is an essay made of texts, pictures and animated pictures. With an anthropological and critical approach (notions such as myth, sacral, religious fact, secular), this book is exploring how aesthetic thoughts and productions — Art, Architecture, Design — legislate systems, organize dimensions of existence, instruct everyday life and special moments, determine sacred and profane. Whereas rationality seems to determine contemporary world order, Belief, now maybe considered as a weak concept, seems to be a key to study our systems. Belief negotiates with transcendence and administers truth, control and power, in relation to contextual conditions.

The pictures are made as iconographical « collages » in 3D. In those models designed as virtual photo sets are installed symbols of different historical and conceptuel moments.


Abstract

Whereas rationality seems to determine contemporary world order, could it be possible that the belief, now maybe considered as a weak concept, allows to study socio-economic systems as a whole ? Belief invariably arranges relations between the phenomena and the world : it negotiates with the transcendence and administers the truth - both polymorphous, subjects to interpretation, control and power wills. Mytho-mania theoretically examines two major opposite belief systems. Myth, as a religious system, ritualizes archaic society by confronting sacred - access to the divine through unproductive expenditure - and profane. Modernity, as a secularized system, normalizes the existence in order to produce and accumulate Capital (money) ; the expenditure is then related to productivity and pro t, and sacred blown by pro- fane. Myth turns to consumation when Modernity aspires to consumption. Post-Modernity is completing Modernity. She provides traces of mythic structures : the mystery surrounding transcendence does not disappear despite the hegemony of the Knowledge system. Aesthetic thoughts and productions - Art, Architecture, Design - always legislate belief systems. How are these phenomena organizing transfers of sacrality, belief’s crossroads — these mytho-mania ?Fresh !, as a small conclusive tome, eventually offers refreshments : ten precepts and selected prophets let us discover alternative spaces, while rehabilitating thoughts often considered as occultism. It becomes necessary to nd adequate symbols for the contemporary transcen- dence — undoubtedly embodied by Rationality, Capital, Digital — and negotiate with it, as we had negotiated with the gods of Myth.


Pictures, texts, video : Hugo L’ahelec. Under the direction of Catherine Geel (T&P WorkUnit) between 2014 and 2015. Limited edition.

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