Dead and Alive in Time

THE HAUNTED ABANDONED MANSION (SOMETHING GOT THROWN AND SCREAMS IN THE BASEMENT) (31 December 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

For today, see two videos. One is an urbex exploration of a reputedly haunted French château. The incredible workmanship, tiles, wood carving, wallpaper, lamps, fireplaces, the lead paint, and the marble work are a reminder that material wealth is no protection against the waste of ages. Even in our brief lives, or across a few paltry generations, placing faith in materialism it is like holding up an umbrella against a hurricane of time.

Image Source: Bloomberg.

The irony is that in previous eras, people were generally more religious. However, the apex of their world view was plainly defined by solid, physical expressions of wealth to anchor themselves in time. A glance tells us that this is the tragic, beautiful esthetic of the dead, a set of choices no longer available to most of us and sadly no longer relevant. Material immobility entraps us in a dead past. Those who still cling to materialism in this old sense use it to construct their social personae; they are deceived if they think that this will help them survive.

Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 20 years (11 January 2020). 7263 days. Video Source: Youtube.

By contrast, the second video is the monumental output of Noah Kalina, entitled Everyday. I have covered Kalina's work previously here and here. Kalina has photographed himself daily for the past twenty years. Kalina achieves a dynamic permanence in virtual reality. The two videos show the tremendous jump in values and perspectives between the 20th and 21st centuries. 21st century cameras and computers propelled the 20th century's monumental, immovable, time-anchored objects into the virtual sphere, and rendered everything that was once tied down by wealth and authority into evolving, shifting phenomena.

Kalina started his project on 11 January 2000, before the launch of Youtube, yet the project was tailor-made for a Youtube space. Younger Youtubers were unsettled by the video. Some were born after 2000 and they thought that Kalina looks depressed and old.

I see in his valiant effort a distinction between the fragile person with dark circles under his eyes, who physically ages, and the eternal self. There are glimpses of personal habits which gave Kalina temporary comfort, stability and security - a beard, a favourite shirt, a girlfriend or wife, an apartment - but these inevitably fall away. What gives him real security and permanence is the Everyday project, in which, regardless of what was happening, he repeated the same activity every day to create a vision of a higher purpose.

Image Source: Spirituality and Health.

In the video, Kalina looks like a superhero flying through, and transcending, the decades. He remains the central figure, his work provides a subtle message about the positive implications (and applications) of technology for those who will follow after him. He is planting a seed of understanding and wisdom.

Image Source: pinterest.

It is an unusual and admirable artistic statement, to capture through photographs and the Youtube mirror the unchanging true self, moving in time, which is continually clinging to, and divesting itself of, its transitory ego-masks and all its props and crutches.

Image Source: AZ Quotes.

Image Source: Verywell Mind.

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