Rustan Söderling follows the life cycle of a bewitched bio-mechanical entity captured in a complex interaction inbetween modernity and folklore.
Following on from a haunting procession through a post-apocalyptic landscape transfigured by remerging misconceptions for VISIO’s Youth Grows Forever, artist Rustan Söderling imagines a fresh encounter with ancient magic and modern-day innovation. Virus Meadow follows the life-cycle of an omnivorous, shapeshifting entity as it stalks through a frozen landscape developing from the trigger of an ancient spirit flame to an disturbing recreation of a humanoid type. Bursting into presence through a frozen lake, through a complex hybrid procedure of absorption and duplication, half earth magic, half extreme osmosis, Söderling’s entity connects with the hostile environment it discovers itself in, as well numerous items and lifeforms it encounters along the method. “Through the veryfirst of its lotsof models it lookslike a Will-O-The-Wisp, a flickering faerie light recognized to lure simple visitors from their courses,” describes Söderling. “In an ancient earth temple it morphs into the figure of The Green Man, all tangled root and rotten leaves. In its encounter with an deserted campground it combines with the numerous humdrum ornaments left behind to lastly looklike something similar to the Golem of Jewish folklore, an entity formed completely of inanimate matter. Finally, through its submergence in an icy lake it crawls onto land and populates its last humanoid performance.” Tracing a development from the natural through the mechanical, the artist develops a speculative lifecycle of a being formed in an environment shaped in equivalent parts by biological intricacy, industrialised production and wonderful strength.
“I had long been interested in the misconception around The Green Man as a kind of nature spirit, or embodied force of the environment, made from both dead and living bio-matter,” continues Söderling. “I tookplace to read the book Lanny by Max Porter midway through the procedure of making the work and it had some rather striking resemblances in the character of Dead Papa Toothwort, who is a sort of nature spirit, however likewise blends with human particles and garbage, a kind of modern Frankenstein’s beast. So the idea of a metamorphosing organism began taking shape, something that goes from the natural world into the human through an extended metaphor for human civilisation and myth. We utilized to be terrified of the dark woods, now we’re frightened of innovation.” As the organism alters, progressively developing in a cooperative relationship with matter both stimulate and inanimate, the ominous nature of its presence is gradually exposed, not in malevolency, however in its unemotional lifecycle of intake and growth, a folk scary doubling of anthropocentric cycles of industrialised usage which are notably missing from Söderling’s frozen, horrible vision of a Disney winterseason forest. This discovery is magnified in Alban Schelbert’s detailed rating, which takes the phenomena of the hummadruz, a sound in the air that you can’t determine, or a noise in the landscape whose source is unplaceable, as its main motivation. Flickering inbetween diegetic and non diegetic sound, Schelbert vocalises the organism in exceptional artificial textures, blurring the line inbetween electronic sound, polyphonic chorus and indecipherable, speech, as though it is gradually discovering to noise like a human.
Finally taking the shape of a human after combining assoonas onceagain from icy waters, the last stage of the organism’s development is exposed. “The animal lookslike a sort of awful Pinocchio figure, summoned with no clear function or intent, like an unintentionally generated infection at a damp market,” states Söderling. “It mixes off to its inescapable conflict with the victims, blissful revellers of a regional rave.” Conceiving of a desolate forest rave as a modern routine, a modern-day counterpoint to the old world sacrifice we see in the movies opening minutes, Söderling visualizes in Virus Meadow’s climax the devastating impacts of this accident inbetween modernity and misconception. “I think the rave absolutely is a sort of contemporary routine, a fertility rite, however with a specific death drive,” discusses Söderling. “The last humanoid variation of the animal hasactually takenin all the inanimate matter, which madeup the golems body, into its flesh, it hasactually internalised the innovation, endedupbeing one with it, it hasactually endedupbeing ‘modern,’ however it is still a sort of robot, like a infection sentout on a blind trajectory out into the world in order to discover hosts.” In this last encounter, the world takes on the verysame spooky orange color as the ancient spirit flame from w