Life On The Mandala
"Angelo Plessas is an artist making work in and around the internet through interactive websites and technoshamanistic rituals. The focus of his practice is to network the offline with the online in ways that make us understand aspects of both conditions and to generate new ways of relating to them. His work highlights the ambiguous approach of spirituality with technology opening up themes of freedom of speech, social relations and identity. Plessas’ activities range from performances to artist residencies; from self-publishing to interactive websites; from sculpture to live-stream events and educational projects. Over the last years, he has organized the annual, weeklong gatherings of the Eternal Internet Brotherhood/Sisterhood in different remote places in the world and, most recently, of the Experimental Education Protocol. He participated in many international biennials, including documenta 14 (in both Kassel and Athens), and in exhibitions in major art institutions, such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens), the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art (Athens), the Jeu de Paume (Paris), Frieze Projects (London), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago). As a Fulbright alumnus, he has been awarded the DESTE Prize in 2015."
Angelo Plessas’s drop features three videos which deal with the concept of continuity between all entities. The videos are editions of unique websites, where you see images from different realities and continuities between our planet and the rest of the Universe, humans, animals, plants, and machines, channelling the idea of synergy between life and technology. Inspired by shamanic and tantric iconography they aspire to become TechnoShamanistic tools for healing, blessing, and meditating. The websites were conceived within the long-term project The Noospheric Society, which is intended to remediate the afflictions of lives that are possessed by a technological “evil eye”. Since 2017 Plessas has been cultivating new forms of communal knowledge and spiritual advancement, while questioning the ideals of unlimited connectivity and insistent demands to “become virtual.” The term ‘noosphere’ supposedly embodies a sphere which has advanced from the biosphere into a new layer of humankind’s planetary intellect. It was coined in the early twentieth century by French philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky.
