Tracey Holland

Tracey Holland, who spent two weeks at the Bakken during October 2006, is a visual artist who lives and works in the U.K. She works with a variety of media, mainly photography and video, but she also uses drawing and painting and assemblage techniques to create installation and photographic work which is shown both in the U.K. and abroad. You can see and read about the work at www.traceyholland.co.uk.

In 2005, the work ´Resurrection Stories´ was commissioned by and shown at the Djanogly Gallery in the U.K. In the two years which lead up to the creation of this work, I recorded a lot of storm footage; lightning in particular. I also spent a lot of time filming argon flasks (which produce a range of coloured lightning). When this film was slowed down, you could clearly see the different coloured strands of dancing electricity. It was this ambiguous display of pure, electric energy that transfixed me. The appearance echoed that of woods at night, vascular networks of leaves and blood vessels, electrical impulses travelling along nerves, roots and river deltas. This pattern is of course reflected all through the natural world as an archetypal form for many delivery systems. Fractal branching networks recur again and again in the landscape, each form has a differing purpose which guides it´s appearance. Lightning is like a fault line in the rock, growing from the tips just like a root into the earth. I wanted to examine the collusion and metamorphosis these usually hidden network of electric threads undergo. I wanted to explore this archetypal form of primal power, to look at why this, the most powerful and all encompassing electrical charge, has such a hypnotic allure coupled with the inherent potential it has to give or take life; to pass through an object or destroy it.

I spent the first two weeks of October 2006 working at the Bakken and during this time I gathered a wide range of  visual information around this theme. I looked at certain renaissance texts concerned with early interpretations of electricity and magnetism. Most of these original books were in Latin and were quite beautiful objects. One of the earliest texts I looked at was written by   Paracelceus. His 16th century writings initiated investigations into the healing powers of the magnet and how he used it to cure. William Maxwell’s De Medicina Magnetica highlighted similarities he had with alchemical and Cabbalistic interpretation of the universal ‘ life-spirit ’ . Another important text was Magnets and the art of Magnetism by Athanasius Kircher (1643), the third book of which depicted magnetism as an elemental force of nature. I’m interested in how these writings helped science evolve away from early alchemists´ investigations into substances and reactions and so lead to a more accurate defining of metals and other substances such as the ‘Tria-prima’- sulphur, mercury and salt.   Early studies into materials such as loadstones, amber, sulphur and silk lead these early scientists to assign certain properties, and some magical ones, such as healing and truth revealing, to this mysterious invisible power. A great deal of alchemic symbolism, and descriptive terms was carried over into the new electrical theorizing. Dennis Stillings in the forward to Ernst Benz’s Theology of Electricity describes it as a:

Sort of medical/spiritual "fifth column" within the body of an otherwise generally mechanistic science and medicine.

He goes on to talk about alchemy as a premature intuitive expression of substance and psyche:

At first matter was a great mystery, a vacuum of knowledge that drew into itself the projections of the structure and dynamics of the human psyche.  Mind became intimately bound up with matter, and this condition was expressed in the obscure symbolism of alchemical formulae.

With the beginnings of modern chemistry and physics, alchemy split in two directions: one was that of mainstream science and technology, the other by a more subterranean and quiet path, led toward the development of psychology and the discovery of the unconscious.  Electricity,expressing both material and immaterial effects, was not readily divested of the ancient symbolic projections; hency by its ambiguous and paradoxical nature, it brought philosophers into yet closer contact with the unconscious.            

Its mysteries were often interpreted as a force that related to a central spiritual energy, such as the sun or a divinity of some sort. I’m interested in how lightning, electricity and magnetism evolved as a symbol for a divine power and featured in many religions, in particular writings found in the Bible, Rig Veda and the Cabbala. The ‘elemental fire’, ‘spiritus mundi’(spirit of the world), the incredible ‘light’ of the first day of creation; these secret forces were now assigned by many to the phenomenon of electricity. Bohme developed the concepts of ‘attraction’ and ‘repulsion’ in accordance with the Cabbalistic theory of the Sephiroth which means the ‘reflections’, or ‘emanations’, or ‘forces’ of God. This electricity was said to be ‘soul-electricity’, a spiritual or universal ether. It was utilized for it’s healing properties from primitive times (pools of electric fish for exorcising spirits) through to Mesmer and his magnetic therapy. The latter involved the harnessing of magnetic power in order to heal.  

I want to explore ideas concerned with the storage of power; from the first Leyden jar to the Voltaic battery. It´s often been stated, by Tesla in particular, that ancient peoples had devices for harnessing and displaying electrical effects in their religious practices, perceived to be a miracle manifestation of the will of God/gods. The most widely talked about is Moses’ Ark of the Covenant which from its very detailed description in Exodus is often described as a form of Leyden Jar. Tesla believed Moses to be a skillful and practical electrician. The ark’s gold lined design would have allowed it to store electric charge and create lightning sparks between the pair of gold cherubs on the lid. The idea of the Ark being such a storage device is interesting because it occupies the territory between myth and fact. If constructed as per the instructions, there’s no reason why it could not have been used for the storage and discharge of electricity (and the Tabernacle that housed the ark would itself be a form of electrostatic generator). Oetinger, the 16 th century theologian, believed that electrical theology explained the magic of the ancients; that the word ‘magic’ derived from the Arabic term ‘magash’ which means to ‘set on fire’.

New work:

I intend to create a new body of work which will incorporate ideas distilled from research conducted at various institutions including the Bakken Library and Museum.

The interest is in linking together ideas from past and present, contrasting these early beliefs in the power of electricity as a universal ‘life-spirit’, with common stories and myth archetypes for the lightning phenomenon. The storm acts as the precursor to great change in myth. It’s a ruthless clearing away of the old order as told in various myths of great floods such as those found in the Gilgamesh epic and later the Bible. These read even more pertinent today with increasingly extreme weather conditions. The explanations for the phenomena differ but the same feelings and ideas issue from witnessing phenomena today as must have been felt centuries ago. The subsequent change in knowledge and beliefs is of great interest to me as it illustrated the mythic importance a phenomenon or substance can attain.

Contrasted with this is the fundamental importance of the electrical process; the necessity of the positive and negative charged ions in every cell, and in every natural transaction, right down to the hunger of protons for electrons that initiates all natural behaviour, whatever the scale of intensity. Lightning equally creates and destroys, a true primal power in which creation and destruction go hand in hand. Even when we are aware of the correct explanation for the usually invisible force of electricity, it doesn’t negate the effect it has on us of fear and respect, we can all be awe stuck at the primal power of a lightning bolt; it has deep roots in human nature and the structure of the Universe. This energy has been used to destroy and to heal. Ernst Benz when talking about the new discovery of electricity says, ‘From the beginning of the world a living life element is added to matter that contains the cause of all future natural creation, an element that Oetinger calls, “the electrical fire concealed in all things… the first man was made from dust, even so the natural soul was his already concealed in dust”.’

As well as the various texts mentioned earlier, I’ll be working with images of artifacts from the Bakken:  Leyden jars, static generators, material such as amber, resin, glassware, gold lined jars, Lichtenburg figures, thunderhouses and electrometers. Understanding the importance of resin, gold leaf, beeswax, silk, amber, sulphur and salt by both seeing its use first hand and experiencing the physicality of the substance has been invaluable and informative Equally impressive was watching and filming the Tesla Coil in action at the museum. This large machine produced a massive ark of electrical discharge around 10ft in length, and was incredibly loud. The finished artwork will reflect these materials, in actuality and by film/photographic representation.

My aim is not to prove or disprove any theory, but to utilise the symbolism of the Ark ; it´s yet another form of ‘container’ capable of harnessing energy, just like the leyden jar. These, be they vessels or buildings, all strive to make a symbolic link between heaven and earth (and lightning bridges the gap between the two); the tabernacle, the ziggurat, the cathedral, or the obelisk. I want to link this idea into my own work in which a range of vessels are assigned the same symbolic importance and potential, a symbolic electrified space for the storage of energy of both a physical and psychological kind.   I want to utilize images which reflect the electrical impulse of the macro and microcosmic environment; from small L ichtenberg figures (frond/root like formations created by the passage of a large electrical discharge through plexiglass) to electrical synaptic transmission between two nerve cells, to the arc of lightning from a Tesla Coil or from the sky. I’d like to elicit a series of links or patterns echoing those which have run through history because they have within them some elements of the universal. Primarily, the power of electricity to transport and transform; the reduction of a forest to ashes or sand to glass in seconds, life to death and death to life. What’s highlighted by all this is the universality and reoccurrence of opposites; regeneration and destruction, the positive and the negative, and how this links together certain universal sentiments and truths.

I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to study at the Bakken. There were two massive advantages to having been there; to have had access to such first class primary source material which I could examine and document, and to have had the opportunity to talk to people dealing with those collections. They really knew their stuff and would willingly help you along the way to discover your goal. For me it was an invaluable experience and thank you to everybody who helped me and made me feel so welcome.