REVISITING THE RABBIT HOLE

May 20, 2021 Ninu Nina

FOR ARTISTS, CREATIVES AND

THE CULTURALLY CURIOUS

Founded in New York in 2008, the rabbit hole is a creative collective and residency program that numbers 5000+ invited members from 56 countries. This year they will launch their first international residency program in Naples, Italy. It was a while back we spoke to Samina Virani, the brainchild behind the rabbit hole. Today we have the opportunity to revisit her journey, and inspiration.

Since we last spoke Samina, can you share some highlights about the rabbit hole. What are some things that you are working on and how did you get to this point?

Since 2008, the rabbit hole has become and un-become several iterations of itself. At first we were just improvising a philosophy. The essence has always been in the process; the philosophical inquiry, and the community and the collaborations within that space.

In terms of the philosophy, the rabbit hole is deeply rooted in the philosophy of deconstruction and the proposition of the “what ifs”. We called this ‘topsy turvy consciousness.” At the time that we created it, the initial spark and, as we saw it, necessity to challenge and provoke, was developed in response to the post post modern noise of living in New York in the early 2000s. After studying cultural anthropology and semiotics, I was always questioning “the codes”, trying to understand “the point,” deconstructing societal rhetoric like the linear trajectories of time and the matrix, as well as definitions of the self, and the masquerade(s) we put on.

However, I was not alone in this pursuit to provoke, and to reinvent. We were a handful of artists and thinkers that came to New York from different parts of the world, working in performance, fashion, music, photography, journalism. We all had a shared disposition about what was happening in New York, what later became formulated as the rabbit hole’s mission: to seek to stimulate new ideas about the self and the other and to challenge culturally constructed limits and borders.

My friend and collaborative mind on the matter Dr Don. Rodrigues (aka The Madhatter) and I created a manifesto.

Referencing Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, creative consciousness' means through Kant and Hegel, The Surrealist Manifesto, the influence of the Dada movement, of course Lewis Carroll, the rabbit hole manifesto was based on exploring the ‘What ifs” and the “what could be.” At the time, some of this was about dabbling into nonsense and the absurd, bending reality, and consequently developing a whole imaginary plane of characters, through critical yet playful consideration of contemporary pop culture. A glimpse of the manifesto is depicted in the tale of the white rabbit:

As Don puts it "In its early phase, the rabbit hole was a peripatetic utopia, a roving show of hope and joy that perfectly encapsulated the angst and ecstasy of New York's artistic youth in those precious moments before the 2008 economic collapse. In assembling its cast of actors from across the globe to gather at strategic pressure points lurking just below the urbane grid, it unsettled and restructured possibilities for experience through art, community, and radical critique."

"The rabbit hole was / is always a space that prioritized relationships between the sensual and intellectual, emphasizing through art and play the unity of seeming contradictions into a series of happy paradoxes. We looked paradox in the eye and summoned it to dance with us."

In 2009, I had an idea to create the first expression of this philosophy and a response to “the system:” It started with a poem and then became a project: ” 060609 – time travelling in New York.

The proposition:

“Meet time. It is quite the renaissance conundrum. We keep it, manage it, run after it, run out of it, and we certainly can’t seem to get enough of it. But what if? We turned it upside down, unset it; release it. after all, who’s in charge here? Has time created us, or have we created time? Has time kept us, or is time ours to keep?”

90 people from New York creative communities were invited to join the journey. 5 New York based artists and 2 international artists were selected to create a response. It turned out everyone had something to say about time. On board the bus, female to female impersonator Ladyfag performed around time as a foreign concept in nightlife, suggesting that “the only moment to live is now.” Pop opera singer Valerie Geffner explored the cyclical nature of time, through her song performance “Antenna.” Turkish installation and visual artist Irmak Canevi proposed creating new time through a series of on board investigations and Berlin-based Argenis Brito introduced syncopated beat experimentation.

The artists were the instigators, the city was the canvas; the passengers were the time explorers; the bus was the time capsule. This 14 hour journey truly was surreal; like some kind of urban magical real carpet ride.

Then there was Smoke at the Chelsea Art Museum. Here we retold the story of 060609 through performance art, and artIfacts. We honestly really didn’t know the direction or the structure of what we were doing. It was a bit of happenstance, and a lot of madness.

In the 2000’s everyone and anyone in the cultural and creative scene of NYC was somehow a part of the rabbit hole…..( this isn’t a question).

Yes it was a real kaleidoscope of characters; the minds and mutterings of all. At the time everything felt so raw and honest. We had Amanda Lepore (New York celebrity transsexual) on stage with Assaf Biderman (Director, MIT University Senselab); Jose Duran and Victor De Souza designing our emblem t shirts; Gandja Monteiro shooting footage. It was really a special time.

What happened next? The rabbit hole vanished from the landscape of New York around 2010, and next we heard you were on a train from Barcelona across Europe and the Middle East, creating interventions and a film for Adidas!

By 2010, the rabbit hole had run its course in New York. The city was becoming more and more gentrified, the voice of nonsense seemed a fading memory, and the collective as a community seemed somehow irrelevant to the city. There was a huge wave of burning man initiatives popping up around the city: plenty of characters, playful antics, pomp and circumstance, but the rabbit hole although visually similar at times, was really about something else. I felt we had to go deeper into our own research and methods to understand what we were really trying to say and do.

What happened after this time in New York?

Don Rodrigues went to study English Literature, Women and Gender Studies at Vanderbilt, receiving his PhD in 2017, whereas I moved to Barcelona in 2011, and started to learn from Teatro de Los Sentidos, discovering a new interest in deconstructing the senses. I also became fascinated with the Mediterranean, the philosophical narrative of the sea, its mythologies and hidden stories, and the sea as a binding agent between Europe and the Middle East. Once out of the New York bubble, the landscape of materials and contexts became vast.

In 2012, I got inspired by a Sufi poem, connected to my roots, called “The Conference of the Birds,” a magical tale of 7 birds who fly across 7 valleys to reach Simurgh. I connected this story to deconstructing the myth and stories that surrounded the Mediterranean to reach the Holy Land from West to East, somehow discovering the silver lining across reality.

The project was called “the crystal express” and marked the launch of the rabbit hole’s mobile residency program. In form, this was a train journey, where 7 international multi-disciplinary artists were selected to embark on a 14 day pilgrimage from Barcelona to Tel Aviv. The idea was that the artists were to explore connectivity across borders, countries and cultures, generating individual responses to the following question: What happens when we deconstruct all the paradigms, open all the borders and explore connectivity using our most powerful technology the senses……?

It was 21 days of pure experimentation: spontaneous events, creative interventions. We worked with Adidas to secure a sponsorship for this, and in return, we created a short film shot and directed by the wonderful and talented Gandja Monteiro.

And then the travelling residency concept was born right?

Yes. The rabbit hole’s travelling residency program was established in 2012, aimed at the deconstruction of myth, storytelling and the essential notion of pilgrimages. It was designed to create a means for artists to explore the magical realism of archetypal journeys, while relying on wit and the power of improvisation to reconstruct new narratives.
We told the story of “the crystal express” in a show we created at Pioneer Works in New York in 2014. Part participatory performance, part exhibition, where we invited 300 people to journey to wonderland with us.

I suppose here the rabbit hole started to anchor itself as an artistic and performative research practice, but I still felt that there was a huge disparity between what we were trying to say, and our forms of expression.

I remember one shot of myself dressed as a white rabbit covered in glitter on the streets of Tel Aviv. I thought, is this really what I’m trying to say?

After “the crystal express” you went to study fine art right? How did that process influence your work?

After the train, I went to study one semester in the MFA program of Fine Arts in Jerusalem, where I learned how to ground my ideas, and to try to formulate an articulation around them, and without the alias of the white rabbit.

I’ve always been interested in deconstruction, but perhaps until then, I had only addressed the subject, skin or societal deep. I realised that my search to deconstruct was in pursuit of understanding more esoteric concepts that were connected to Sufism as well as Kabbalah.

I began to articulate the idea of the “secret gaze” the “in between space”, “the invisible”, dimensions in deconstruction that dissolve the form entirely.

I developed my path as a conceptual artist around these concepts.

Tell us about the artist residency in Naples

As the sequel to the Crystal Express train journey, we wanted to create the Crystal Odyssey, this time a group of pilgrim artists journeying by sea from West to South Europe and onto the Middle East. However, due to political borders, this project has not yet been materialised.

In 2019, I proposed to create a two week artistic residency program in Naples, as one of the Mediterranean’s strategic port cities. We have been very fortunate to have the support of Fondazione Morra, considered the epicentre of cultural investigation in Italy. The foundation, whose artistic and cultural raison d'être is “art for the sake of research and knowledge” is fascinated by the subversive potential of the avantgarde and has hosted artists such as Hermann Nitsch, Marina Abramovic, Bob Watts and Peter Kubelka.

https://www.101010n.com/the-art-of-remembering:

When reading about the residency it seems to have more elements than a typical residency program. Is this more of a master class?

The 2 weeks is entirely process based.

While designing the program for this, it’s true that this is not a typical artist residency. We are interlacing a toolkit called “the rabbit hole method” with several facilitators from around the world introducing their methodologies to the group. The idea is that these tools can then be used by the artists to inform their work.

I think the residency is the optimum space for knowledge sharing, and process-based development.

I also envision this as some kind of awareness workshop. The format is a bit experimental, and the way it will evolve really depends on the process that we, as a collective, embark upon. There are some playful and provocative experiences awaiting the artists, that much I can say.

There will also be a lot of time for the artists to work on their project and to explore Naples.

Tell more about “the rabbit hole method”™:

As it is outlined, each artist will interrogate the subject of "remembering" immersing in The Rabbit Hole Method™, a process of inquiry that extracts and distills from contemporary artistic practices, philosophy, mysticism, mathematics and dance. It includes the teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan, Farid Ud-Din Attar, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Lewis Carroll, among others.

Over time we collect experiences; we also disseminate that into knowledge. We meet teachers along the way. I felt that it could be interesting to share some of my personal experiences with teachers from around the world. The invited facilitators for this edition of the program will introduce tools that can inspire, and also become a means to accessing parts of our memory, our consciousness, our unconsciousness, awareness, whatever you might call it.

What does the future of the residency look like?

In the upcoming year, we are also launching “The Hatch” a nano residency program in London that is designed for one artist to work in a creative and serene space for 2-3 weeks.

Contact whiterabbit@101010n.com

How has the pandemic and this year as a whole changed you as a person, and your work or ideas?

At first the pandemic seemed almost surreal. Time seemed to have stopped, which was an interesting proposition. However after several months, inspiration faded, which then became the big void. Without the world in motion, the inner world cannot move either. The flow of creativity was not there for me.

The stillness became stagnation, and the stagnation became “stuckness.”

Now becomes the process of “unsticking” then embracing the stillness, and hopefully moving back into creative flow. It will take some time.

How do you see the art world changing as we move forward?

I think it’s important that artists and their messages are always authentic, and integral to their own individual journeys and beliefs. The pandemic has affected us all, however it is not clear if this has affected our artistic messages.

The art world might be inclined to work with pandemic issues, however I think it’s important to go beyond this layer, and to remain true to our art practices and messages. The pandemic could inform our work, but not necessarily become the subject of it.

I see the “art world” as the community of people that create; that need to create; that are committed to create. There is no real concrete definition of who those people are.

The art market: well that’s a different story.

Get in touch samina@101010n.com