ED3N TEMPLE | Mara Oscar Cassiani

ED3N Temple is a hymn to the sacredness of the body and an invitation to both URL and IRL care practices.

During the performance, the artist dedicates herself to meditation and yoga exercises inside a room covered in wood, illuminated by ultraviolet lights and full of orchids, phosphorescent phone covers and white towels. From time to time Cassiani takes some selfies that she corrects and publishes on her social media. An ASMR video is projected in the background to provoke a pleasant feeling of relaxation in the listener thanks to studied auditory details, in this case, the slow roar of the sea waves. In Cassiani’s performance, physical and virtual space are blended: every gesture of care towards the body and the spirit is performed by the artist on herself and later shared via social media. ED3N Temple creates a multidimensional environment in which well-being, body care and balance become almost mantra, ritual, practice. The complexity of the physical and virtual environment created by Cassiani, with motivational phrases, rebalancing chromatic stimuli, relaxing sounds defines a meditative and contemplative, personal and shared, intimate and aesthetic experience.

In Cassiani’s work a concept of the body extends in a fluid way, expanding the culture of the self in the two dimensions, virtual and physical, that the performance involves: eden and temple are two historically fundamental references in the narration of body care (an original state of physical bliss in which this is truly a sacred temple of the soul) while the alphanumeric spelling of ED3N refers to the conceptual sphere of coding and computer architectures that support digital communication. Furthermore, in this case the component of social sharing of the almost mystical experience shown and offered in ED3N Temple also comes into play: here one benefits from a combination of care practices for a single body that turns collective on social media and the very act of sharing by Cassiani on her profiles only confirms the assumption that sharing means taking care, sharing is caring.

 
©Mara Oscar Cassiani, ED3N Temple, 2016
By gracious courtesy of the artist and Centrale Fies
7/12/2020