PSYCHIC PROTECTORS
Psychic Protectors documents two rituals we have performed for decades: altering historic family buildings in the Eastern Mojave, and inking the Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary. Presented together in a series of photo collages, the two projects have a visual and conceptual resonance with one another that has allowed us to explore them each in more detail.
We’ve made these repairs at Mystery Ranch for decades, and there is a rhythm to them. We try to use what is at hand, and to conserve and honor the land's history. And we try to leave things better than they were before, for the future. It’s an opportunity to try out new ideas, learn new skills, and dream, maybe different, maybe strange -- but maybe better dreams.
At our home studios we practice personal rituals too, and one of them has been the devotional inking of Webster’s dictionary -- highlighting helpful and hopeful words and definitions. This is a game about choosing what seems important, a meditation on seeking and finding knowledge. What jumps out on the page on any given day is always linked to the circumstances of that time, this year even more so. We can’t easily solve our collective problems right now, and we are all facing an existential crisis of adaptation – at times we are at a loss of what to. But each day we can do a little something; we maybe can’t affect the entire system in a meaningful way but we can affect our own microcosm of it, and our own understanding of it. We can continue to look for answers one page, one definition, one brushstroke at a time. And we can continue to strive to learn useful things, and to focus on what gives us strength to carry on tomorrow.
Some of the old ways aren’t working anymore, and we must create new systems of operating. To do that we must internalize what is happening to us, ground ourselves in it, and look for creative solutions. Rituals are an effective way to do this; they are transformative precisely because they combine a physical action, through assigned symbolism, with an intention for change. They make our reactions to the challenges we face more hopeful. And they put us in a sacred space when we set about fixing things, one tiny piece at a time.