Dossiers

“The Shaman’s Journey,” created by anthropologist and media artist Thomas Ross Miller (Curatorial Consulting, New York) with the assistance of video producer Craig Campbell (Metafactory Studio, Edmonton), is a distinct aural and visual environment within the larger exhibition. Through video projections, special lighting, and 360-degree sound, the visitor navigates a passage between the twilight evocation of birds and animals and the deep night chanting and drumming of shamanic ceremony. Winter landscape photography by Hiroki Takakura surrounds the space of one room, while another is enveloped by fluorescent reproductions of paintings by Chukchi and Koryak natives, representing the cosmos and the 15 spirit beings encountered by shamans along their paths. Century-old waxcylinder recordings, contemporary field and studio recordings, and the atmospheric sounds of earth’s magnetic field play continuously over 25 independent sound channels, creating an ever-shifting soundscape. Films include a slide show of rare early photographs and a widescreen montage drawing on petroglyphs, landscapes, and pure color to produce synaesthesia effects. This interlude suggests a transformation of consciousness corresponding to situations which might have been experienced and felt by attendants of shamans’ ceremonies in Siberia in the past.