across the star-flooded fields the sound is shining clear composed of glimmering lights

it’s frothing the viscous air inhaling the copper promise in the frayed tint speckled with olfactory traps
slithering away in the lustrous gardens through cushions of time dictating the direction of winds

— crosslucid (2023)

Dwellers Between the Waters (2023) is conjured by the interdisciplinary artist collective CROSSLUCID as a series of hybrid rituals that mediate the space in between physical presence, trauma, memory, healing and virtuality. Polyphonic in its artificially-intelligent framework, Dwellers Between the Waters could be experienced as a happening that is chanted by various elemental entities such as waters, winds, earth, air, algorithm… as well as poetry, history, magic, human and more-than-human creatures… This happening of digital rituals questions about the singularity of humanist perception on reality. Co-performing with artificial intelligence, it attempts to create alternative epistemologies and outlooks on the (so-called) reality through rendering multi-focal narratives and embedding the psycho-magical practice in forms of living ‘sigils’.

Combing artificial intelligence with the practice of magic and alchemy, Dwellers Between the Waters seeks possible solutions in response to the traumas of the contemporary anthropos, and examines how artificial intelligence, in terms of artistic practice, remains integral to our contemporary condition, that is, the ever-evolving climate crisis and the sixth extinction of species coupled with wars, inflation, capitalist exploitations… By evoking, cultivating and connecting various forms of consciousness in the virtual realms, Dwellers Between the Waters invites the ‘dwellers’ who inhabit in and among ‘realities’ to share their stories and experiences, which then feed back to the (so-called) reality as evolving strings materialising across both physical and virtual domains to (hopefully) bring novel perspectives for further changes.

by oxi pëng