Eliza Swann

Eliza Swann

[elizaswann]

Machine Elf, 35mm photograph, 2012

[elizaswann]

Art In Odd Places and The Golden Dome School PRESENT: SHE HAS RISEN! A Procession For the Goddess of Love Friday the 13th, starting at 6pm This project is made possible by support from the Foundation For Contemporary Arts Beginning at 14th Street and 8th Avenue and winding our way toward Union Square, we will be carrying an effigy representing the Goddess of Love and proselytizing on behalf of the Sacred Feminine. With sacred artists: Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve, Lily Benson, Anais Delsol, Catherine Feliz, Allison Halter, Nina Isabelle, Lenora Jayne, Grace Kredell, Kaitlyn LeBlang, Jennifer McDermott, Mollie McKinley, Loren Nosan, Samantha Rehark, Jean Rim, Adrian Shirk, Eliza Swann, Kim Tran, Emilia Turner, Tamara Wyndham, Alice Sparkly Kat, Jennifer Zackin We define “feminine” not as a gender, but as a construct encompassing many aspects of our world that have been erased, conquered, and shamed such as: women, emotions, the body, creativity, sensitivity, care, interdependence, nurturance, and love. "She Has Risen" is a celebration of these things, as well as a rallying cry for us to care for each other during this time of climate change, political tension, and war. "We give gratitude to the GODDESS OF LOVE, to the dust of stars that congealed into the body of this planet, our home, and that gives form and solidity to our bones and flesh. We honor the rocks and their long slow cycles. We give thanks to the living soil, and the billion creatures that haunt her caves and pores and chasms, to the beetles and the ants and the termites, to the soil bacteria swimming in the slick of water that clings to her mineral archways, to the worms, wriggling, eating, coupling, and transforming within her. We bless the plants, the roots and stems and boughs, the great trees reaching upward and the deep-rooted herbs pushing down, all who contribute to the cycles of birth and growth and death and decay that lead to NEW GROWTH. For THE GODDESS that feeds and sustains life, for all that grows, runs, leaps, and flies, we give thanks. Blessed be THE GODDESS OF LOVE. Great forces of creativity, growth, and love, great inventive imagination that has grown the diversity of life, mystery of the unfolding of form from energy, great powers of the trees and the grasses, the sunlight and the rain, great currents that move the continents and tides of the ocean, we send you love and gratitude and ask for your help. DEAR GODDESS OF LOVE - HELP US TO OVERTHROW ALL TOXIC CAPITALISTIC SYSTEMS OF GREED AND EXPLOITATION IN FAVOR OF LIFE AND LOVE FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL BEINGS. HELP US END ALL WAR AND ALL HIERARCHY. LOVE IS THE GATEWAY TO PARADISE. LOVE IS YOUR WAY. It seems impossible. It seems beyond human strength. Please lend us some of your power. Open our eyes and ears to inspiration. Release the obstacles that confront us, and draw in the resources, the luck, the ideas, and the energies that we need. Help us to succeed beyond our expectations for the restoration of Earth's health and bounty and the reinstatement of human harmony with all of creation. BLESSED IS LIFE AND LOVE. BLESSED AM I. SHE HAS RISEN. SHE IS LOVE. SHE IS HERE. I HAVE RISEN. I AM LOVE. I AM HERE. *prayer based on Starhawk's BLESSINGS from her book "The Earth Path"

[elizaswann]

Highlights from “The Resurrection of Care Ritual”, 2017

[elizaswann]

“The Resurrection of Care” 2017!

The Golden Dome School has begun the tradition of performing “The Resurrection of Care” ritual each year - a short performance that invites Los Angeles artists and mystics to respond to our culture’s violence, ecocide, caustic hierarchies, and exploitative capitalism.

The notorious Bohemian Club, an ultra-exclusive all-male club, has membership that includes business leaders, government officials, former US presidents, military elite, bankers, media executives, and other men in positions of power. Political and business deals are developed at the Club’s annual summer gathering at Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, CA. An early meeting for the Manhattan Project took place there in 1942, which subsequently led to the use of the atomic bomb in World War II.

At the annual Bohemian Grove gathering, members stage the 135-year old “Cremation of Care” ceremony on July 7, in which the body of “Care” is symbolically cremated and banished from Bohemian Grove, paving the way for drunken celebration, male bonding, capitalistic scheming, warmongering, and – according to many reports – excessive public urination.

In response, the Golden Dome School developed “The Resurrection of Care”, an annual ritualistic play performed by Golden Dome artists. The play narrates the resurrection of the cremated body of caring, underscoring that life on Earth is worth caring for. Each year we re-instate our vow to care for ourselves and all of the people, plants, animals, water, earth, air, and spirits that are threatened with annihilation by unfettered greed and exploitation.

The 2017 ritual includes performing artists Edgar Fabian Frias, Tanya Love, Lindsay Minnich, Candy Pain, SA RA, Laura Berlin Stinger, and sound makers Electric Sound Bath.

Organized by Patrick Mansfield and Eliza Swann

[elizaswann]

“YES GODDESS” performs at the Ace Hotel closing party for the LA Art Book Fair 2017 featuring Edgar Fabian Frias, Eugene Olea, Eliza Swann - we invoke the divine feminine, spreading the blessings of the Goddess to everyone thread by thread. Thank Goddess, YES GODDESS!

[elizaswann]

“The Resurrection of Care”, MaRS Gallery, October, 2016 

[elizaswann]

Eliza plays “The Empress”, Golden Dome School Empress session, Woodstock, NY 2015 

[elizaswann]

“The Resurrection of Care”, MaRS Gallery, 2016

The Golden Dome School has begun the tradition of performing "The Resurrection of Care" ritual each year - a short performance that invites Los Angeles artists and mystics to respond to our culture’s violence, ecocide, caustic hierarchies, and exploitative capitalism. The notorious Bohemian Club, an ultra-exclusive all-male club, has membership that includes business leaders, government officials, former US presidents, military elite, bankers, media executives, and other men in positions of power. Political and business deals are developed at the Club’s annual summer gathering at Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, CA. An early meeting for the Manhattan Project took place there in 1942, which subsequently led to the use of the atomic bomb in World War II. At the annual Bohemian Grove gathering, members stage the 135-year old "Cremation of Care" ceremony on July 7, in which the body of “Care” is symbolically cremated and banished from Bohemian Grove, paving the way for drunken celebration, male bonding, capitalistic scheming, warmongering, and – according to many reports – excessive public urination. In response, the Golden Dome School developed "The Resurrection of Care", an annual ritualistic play performed by Golden Dome artists. The play narrates the resurrection of the cremated body of caring, underscoring that life on Earth is worth caring for. Each year we re-instate our vow to care for ourselves and all of the people, plants, animals, water, earth, air, and spirits that are threatened with annihilation by unfettered greed and exploitation. The 2016 ritual includes performing artists Edgar Fabian Frias, Saewon Oh, Candy Pain, Laura Berlin Stinger, and Eliza Swann 

[elizaswann]

Chiron, Water Color and Foil on Paper, 2016

[elizaswann]

“Glacial Prayer” by Eliza Swann, a hypnotherapeutic record designed to facilitate communication between humans and the melting glaciers, made while artist in residence at Soundfjord in London. 

[elizaswann]

“The Struggle of the Magicians”, live performance, 2010, The Living Theater

[elizaswann]

MIRRORS AT MIDNIGHT is a 20 page 'zine / transcript of an ongoing dialogue taking place between the female leaders, healers, and visionaries that facilitate The Golden Dome School's work. In engaging with our own journeys into the uncharted terrain of the female mystic, we make accessible our capacity for giving artistic and spiritual authority to ourselves. This conversation is a celebration of our integrated identities as women, artists, seers, and healers as we offer ourselves power and transcendence in a patriarchal spiritual world which does not readily give us agency, and an art world which does not readily give us place. Participating artists in this dialogue are Genevieve Belleveau, Grace Kredell, Linda Mary Montano, Eliza Swann, and Monica Uszerowicz. Parts of this content will also be released in Perfect Wave Magazine VOLUME 4.

You can purchase a copy HERE

[elizaswann]

Photographic still from "Ripe For Pleasure on Mysterious Mountain", a book of dance scripts to be performed while crossing a mountain. Recorded on video in 2012. The video can be viewed HERE.

Excerpt from the book:

"CONCENTRIC CIRCLES RADIATING FROM A CENTRAL VOID “The concentric motif is characteristic of the visionary experience itself and stands for the aperture through which the shaman penetrates the Underworld or the Sky, by means of which he transcends the physical Universe.” - Joan M. Vastokas, The Way of the Shaman Find a void on the mountain: foxhole anthill hollow stump wishing well a circle drawn in the dirt. Orbit in spirals around it until you are in harmony with the movements of our solar system corkscrew galaxies the whorls in your fingertips your radiating irises wormholes snail shells tornadoes the growth pattern of leaves haloes the Bermuda Triangle ear canals birth canals death canals End the dance by bowing to the void"

[elizaswann]

"The Devil", oil on photograph, 2013.

[elizaswann]

[elizaswann]

“A Terrestrial Cutting and Assemblage”, Single Channel Video, 2013.

Starring Daniele Imara, anonymous Druid practitioners, an injured swan, and the voices of Selena Fox and Z Budapest. Filmed by Matthew J Humphreys, Leah Burdon-Manley, and Eliza Swann. With love to all from the latter.

[elizaswann]

A video still from “A Bright Hand in Darkness”, a dance choreographed for video based on Ursula K LeGuin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness”. Set for release in January, 2015.