Kinetic Chapels

Kinetic Chapels (2011-12) is a project of solar-powered kinetic chapels with stop motion animations of different saints.  For years Performing Pictures has fused new technology and cinematic designs with sacred images under the description “electrifying folk-Catholicism”. Well aware that movement inexorably profanes stillness, Performing Pictures has sought to return the cultic experience of the ineffable to an expression of community and coexistence.  Each instance of the Kinetic Chapels involve several modes of aesthetic production: from the making of the animation puppets to the construction of a movie theater housing the final animations. Communal ties are renewed as each step on the way to the completion of a public art work is achieved through mutual exchange of knowledge and skill. The chapels, situated in an off-grid environment by rural roads, require self-sufficiency in regards to electricity. Renewable energy is introduced through solar power—not as part of a subservient tribute to the globalist cult of Reason and eternal Progress, but rather as part of local ceremony and recurrent communion. There are at this moment 5 kinetic chapels spread throughout Mexico and Croatia. Their maintenance becomes part of daily rituals and reverence such as bringing a fresh pot of flowers or changing the car battery. The dialectic interplay of iconoclasm (making images less sacred as motion is introduced) and iconophilia (re-introducing a contemplative dimension through obfuscated placements and the repetitiveness of film loops) seeks to deviate from the path of the historical avant-garde of art: it is not necessary to destroy old idols in order to create new ones. Ultimately, in a line of thought attributed to Kierkegaard, that if something is new it’s not by its own nature different. Difference is in fact discernible, and thus already present, which in turn would make it not new. The Kinetic Chapels are the apex of a long-term endeavor to create forms and materialities in the spirit of the Tinglish phrase "same same but different".