MARK DION, DANA SHERWOOD, TUGULDUR YONDONJAMTS – MYSTICAL GEOGRAPHY AND LANDSCAPES OF DEEP TIME: THREE ARTISTS EXPLORE MONGOLIA
Opening June 22, 2019
Pinksummer palazzio ducale, Genova, Italy
pinksummer.com
Please find an excerpt from an interview about the show with RU alumn, Tuguldur Yondonjamts below. The full interview with all the artists can be found here.
In 1990, with the end of communism, Mongolia, especially in rural and mountain regions, began to recover the shamanic tradition as if it were a sort of philosophy of crisis capable of guiding the tragic transition from socialism to post-socialism, recreating a positive humus to negotiate with the vagueness of the transition. In this sense shamanism along with music and song has somehow re-established the historical-cultural continuity, swept away by the Socialist Republic of Mongolia established in the 1930s. The shaman in Mongolia has always been in charge of the community to restore balance to create harmony and harmony; the skill of the shaman has never been separated from sound, from singing, from music, as a form of intersubjective communication.
TY: “A shaman is able to jump seven times from the top of a mountain to reach the bottom,” I heard this as a child. Of course, I didn’t know how high the mountain was, whether the voice was based on someone’s dream or physical reality, or if it was one of the “stories” told among the children of communist Mongolia in the 1980s. I’m not an expert in shamans, but they’ve existed for so long ago that I can’t even imagine. They represent experienced travelers, whose knowledge of spirits, plants, animals, landscape and related weather conditions led them to play a significant role in antiquity, but also in today’s Mongolian society. The shaman suit / suit is equipped with different objects and each of them has a specific role / use for the journey to different dimensions. They blend quite well in any environment, so they also practiced their knowledge in communist Mongolia. They have traveled far enough, they are fascinating for many.
In my video Myna Song , I was curious about the different perception of time of insects, birds and humans. I have tried several times to alter the speed of sound of birds and insects and to find us any word of the dialects or of the Mongolian language. In some ways this has triggered a certain feeling, which refers to a dreamlike situation. Adding levels in editing, altering the speed of sound according to birds and insects, writing history using the snake skin system, a bone map, all these steps have been made to imitate the poem.
