Shamans Under Oath


A proposal to the Department of Justice: Invite shamans into the law courts in order that they may determine a speaker’s sincerity by accessing defendant veracity auras. Polygraph machines to be kept in the cupboard as an auxiliary.

The first three photographs are an imagined ‘shaman’s eye view’ of a well known former U.S. president giving testimony before grand jury. If the Shaman literally ‘sees the truth,’ then it follows that they are capable of detecting untruths. 

Given that a human face can reveal information through its expressiveness by displaying quirks, twitches, or ‘tells’ if you play poker, then a hyper cognizant being in possession of paranormal faculties, such as a shaman, may read a face by other means. In scrutinizing and contemplating a subject does one achieve a kind of valence, of atoms combining? As Merlin revealed to the young Arthur “You and the land are one.” 

When thinking about what is called ‘artistic license,’ artists themselves have nothing to lose by assuming the role of shaman/entertainer, that is, ‘Shamantertainer,’  The self-appointed role of a picture psychic conversant in visual language is a helpful mindset when beginning any kind of creative activity: Be it strapping a video camera on the heel of a vacuum cleaner in order to record dust stream, or inserting a microphone into a working toothbrush head to simulate the whirring sound of helicopter rotor blades. what is the creative act after all other than a record of the trance state, processing, filtering, persuading, refining, suggesting, brewing, improvising, parking, cultivating, churning, waffling, provoking, loving and becoming reality into meta form? 

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