DREAMING of HEPHAESTUS is an 50mn. audiovisual performance essay which borrows its frame
from the greek myth of Hephaestus, the god of fire, blacksmiths and
volcanoes, etherreal and textual narratives.
As the legend says, young Hephaestus was one day thrown
down from mount Olympus either in disgust over his lame leg by his
mother, or by his father after a family quarrel. He falls for a day and a
night, plunges down in the ocean before he finally finds shelter
underneath a mountain. Our story starts as he finally lays down to
sleep…
Borrowing the narrative structure from dreaming, the video is merging
together scenes and finds its fluid rhythm through repetition,
abstractions and the many different faces of the mother archetype.
It can be experienced in the forgetfulness of a night’s sleep or be read as
a multi-layered essay which opens up for thoughts around the analogies
found between volcanism and the human psychology as well as the
fluidity of dreams and desires.
The artists tend to express their wish to re-use, collage and explore the
dream artefact through restructuring the audiovisual piece (or movie)
from indeterminancy. Dreaming of Hephaestus is made using VDMX
prepared project involving real-time GPU mix operations of several found
and recorded footages, built-in effects, triggered through MIDI control
and live input, analog synthesizers, audio modulators and loopers.
