Month: November 2020

Thinking about: rituals and magic (the appeal and discomfort of that), sandplay – a form of play therapy often used with children to access the subconscious mind

I made this divination tablet from porcelain to use with beeswax. For this first session, I asked my mother whether she had any questions about the past or future.

She wanted to know what the next five years might look like. I arranged the pieces according, she chose a candle location, and after the process we interpreted the plate together.

I do have audio recordings of our entire conversation, but it’s very candid, and I’m not sure if it’s an essential component of this.

I also struggled with duration for this. This process took a long time – almost 40 mins. Although I am interested in slowing time, I’m not sure where to go with this length of time yet. Maybe I will make much shorter candles, maybe I will experiment with other ephemeral materials to denote time.

When I edited the video for uploading, I did cut out a lot of parts and fast-forward a few other parts. But that felt so wrong, to seek the moment when exciting changes happen to the wax for visual satisfaction.

I was drawn to both the idea and visuals of tending to / take care of the flame. You can’t just light a candle and just walk away in this set up because it might blow out. Unlike time on a digital clock, which we can just leave running and running, paying it no mind as we scroll online or jump from task to task, as though we had endless time to use.

Experimenting with the burn time of candles in relation to length, weight and density/thickness of wick

These wax stains as concrete visualization of a duration of time. Though we constantly measure it, and feel short of it, it’s hard for us to really grasp time.

Perhaps these clocks keep track of a particular activity (e.g. all the conversations I have with someone). So that the accumulation of wax shows all the time I’ve spent on something, with my attention focused. Instead of distracted, scattered, which is how a lot of us usually experience modern time.