- watch: 24th October 2020 at 9pm UTC
- duration: 15min
“Reflections of Entanglement” is an experimental performance project inspired by butoh aesthetic approaches and was created as an aid for a certain alchemical transformation in the psyche, after having faced repeatedly the deep and gruelling challenges of love and loss. It includes both a film and an ongoing and organically evolving live performance aspect. The vision for this project had been gestating long before its ultimate realisation in the year of 2020. The different scenes or episodes comprising it were finding expression in the minds eye one by one over the course of the last three to four years, through the processing of certain dysfunctional relationship dynamics as a painful and yet eye-opening experience about the existential nature of love itself and the different ways in which it can function in the lives of human creatures. These experiences and the realisations that came from them, catalysed deep personal growth in many ways. This was greatly assisted in the last year in particular, through working with Systemic Family Constellations therapy, both on a personal level and through undergoing initial training as a future facilitator myself. This context provided a far clearer lens through which to see reality and the dynamics that inadvertently play up in human emotional relationships… How shared traumas and desires (through specific lacks within each Self), can magnetically pull people together in a dance of fatal attraction. How the things we cannot see because they lie within our inner blind-spots, can insidiously and most dangerously, entangle us to people and situations that if not handled with the outmost conscious care – a near impossible thing when one is triggered emotionally and does not yet possess the proper tools to handle it – can become very destructive, constrictive and painful. This pain however can become a teacher. If one has the courage to honestly look through the eyes of the Other, as though through the Looking Glass to see themselves more clearly, accepting and learning from, whatever it is they see…. All of this becomes a powerfully transformative experience. However, no matter how well such things are processed and assimilated within the respective inner worlds of the individuals involved, when the love has been great yet the pain and violence of it even greater, the only peaceful resolution is Retreat. Co-performed with Piotr Bockowski and realised with Martyna Dzierżyńska behind the camera. Original sound, concept, creative direction and editing, by Alice Karveli.
BIO: Alice Karveli is originally from Athens (b. 1990), Greece and has been based in London since 2014. Graduating with a Mixed Media Fine Art BA, she works across many mediums (painting, drawing, collage, photography, installation, music, sound and dance), though her main focus is performance, particularly through film, laboriously edited into create hypnotic visions with immersive, experimental soundscapes. In working with the body, she uses the kinaesthetic element; the sounds created by the performative actions and the expression of inner song. Materials used – whether natural (e.g. clay, ink or water) or artificial (e.g. black paint, cling film, fabric, hypodermic needles) – always bear symbolic significance in relation to the human element. She is interested in the transformational potential of both the making and the showing of her work, by means of the symbolic processes she undertakes. The performance pieces become personal rites facilitating esoteric work: transforming intense psychological and physical experiences (pain, constriction, entrapment, struggle, damage, etc.) into protective and creative power, exorcising fears, and integrating aspects of the shadow-self during the process of liberating the true self. In doing so, her goal is also to create transformational rites the viewer can project upon, thus potentially instigating an analogous transformational process within themselves. She approaches her painting and illustration practice as a method of processing and expressing inner images relating to the spiritual aspect of life and morphogenesis. A way to visualise their cyclical nature, the ordeals and ecstasies one is put through by them, the lessons learned and the growth achieved beyond. A way of tracing the flow of connection between elemental forces, other beings and abstract forms. She is interested in archetypes, forms, symbols and patterns, which emerge intuitively and organically in the works, informed by the chaotic element of living in materiality. She works with mixed techniques and an often intense colour palette. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Greece since 2009, in London since 2014 and Italy (2019) working with art collectives like the Random Artists TAA, The Nave, gallery Art Number 23 at The Old Biscuit Factory in London, ITSLIQUID and Artrooms Fairs in Italy, Pallas Arts in Qatar. She has had two solo exhibitions in Athens in 2013 and 2014 and one in London at The Hive Dalston social space in 2017. She is represented by Appel gallery in Athens Greece. Beyond the realm of fine art, she is also a musician, poet and flow artist, whilst also working as a freelance tattoo artist and massage therapist. ARTIST’S WEBSITE