«I believe in your agony», once Ilias told me. This was on December 2020, at the end of a workshop he co-organized with Michael Ackerman. It stroke me. A few months later, we began our collaboration. His first words worked as a guideline. Ilias believes, which means that you, as a student, are heard. More than that, his active listening gives you trust to push your creativity forward – which, in my case, was oriented toward editing, sequencing and conceiving a book dummy – an ongoing project up to now.
Ilias’s words are scarce. No need for talking much. An orientation, an advise, a question. The real magic appears between two sessions. The creativity, renewed and reenergised, unleashes. And, little by little, the agony takes form. It has been heard – and trusted. The Fortnight therapy made the agony come to life out of your head – and it heals the soul.
Momento Demento.
Keep a trace, then go lost yourself dancing once again. So I heard – and so did I. The current project is an attempt to document trancelike state from within. It is an ongoing testimony of how people’s basic instinct of trance survived in the modern era. During two weeks of festival on acids my mind stretched between creativity and abandon. The current project gathers these fragments of clarity mixed with ecstasy – my own, and other’s. I was juggled between my cameras, randomly picking one or another with no particular discipline, shooting without watching, giving up to drugs. All I remember, today, is that I was there – burning. Momento Demento, an ongoing project.-
I clearly recall how it all began.
A great influx of psychedelic substances
was bringing natural order on the brink of sanity. We were high – but we all were high together, connected beyond the usual social schemes. The lines of reality were becoming blurry. And the bass started. It gripped our bodies. Mad. The crowd had gone mad – and so did I. We were being driven by a collective trance. I could see it even with closed eyelids. I was seeing through hundreds pairs of of eyes. It lasted two weeks, until the psychedelic sound-waves lied flat.
Bio
Jérémie Vaudaux – Vodoje works as a writer for French & Swiss
newspapers and magazines. He shares his time between Europe, Sahara
and Western Africa. His photography practice took a new turn after a fire
took all his tools & archives away on summer 2021.