Total runtime of 2 hours, paper scroll of 150x2250cm, charcoal, erasers, scissors, incense, casette tape-loop, casette boombox, nails. First public enactment, documented here as the opening of an ongoing series.

Dark Wood is an alchemical ritual born through a developing studio practice. The method, staring into the grain of a charcoal-coated surface, erasing without a predetermined image, letting the material itself suggest form, was originally a conversation between the maker and the medium. This public iteration, first realised during a fellowship with Baltan Laboratories, translates that intimate grammar into a shared space.

Participants enter a magical circle, a zone indicated by the scroll of paper, which is ruled by a different logic. A repetitive, synchronizing sound fills the room from a tape-loop, a scroll of blackened paper hangs before them. They are guided to choose a word, repeat it until meaning dissolves into vibration, and then to erase the charcoal by following the patterns that emerge from the noise. There is no intended outcome, no desired image. The hand moves in response to what the surface reveals, not what the mind imposes.

The instructions are simple but strict: lose yourself, don’t think, deduct, intuit, and yet no two traces ever resemble each other. When the conscious mind is occupied with the mantra and the ritual bounds, the unconscious speaks in a language before language. Figures, textures, and gestures surface that could not have been planned. The scroll becomes a collective map of inner terrains glimpsed in a state of heightened receptivity.

This document records the first workshop in what I hope will be an ongoing cycle. The theory that underpins the method, alchemical stages, the role of the inner guide, the cut-up of perception, is gathered at athanor.one. For those curious, the only way to understand Dark Wood is to enter it. The ritual continues to evolve, and each participant leaves a mark that shapes what it becomes next.



EXHIBITION HISTORY

The 21st Century Alchemist (2026)
Curation: Baltan Laboratories
Documentation: Barbara Medo
Van Abbehuis, Eindhoven